AICN-DOWNUNDER: 2005 MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL REPORT#2

AICN-DOWNUNDER: 2005 MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL REPORT #2

Hey all. Three more films from the festival, all reviewed by yours truly. The third and final report should be up sometime after the weekend, and will have a little

GODZILLA: FINAL WARS

Reviewed by Latauro

I'm not 100% what really happened in this film, so I'm going to give you a brief rundown to see if it becomes any clearer as I type.

Godzilla has been subdued in the South Pole, and the world is peaceful again. Neo, no longer trapped in the Matrix, has joined the X-Men, and his assignment is to look after Dr Christmas Jones as she studies the big monster that John Hammond has captured. Then they're transported to a magic cave where the Wonder Twins tell them that these monsters were actually created by the Mimbari. Then all the monsters come back to life and start attacking the world. Then the Mimbari suddenly arrive and stop the monsters and say they want peace with Earth. Then they don't, and the monsters come back. Then Neo realises that the only person who can help him beat everyone is Rear Admiral Ron Jeremy.

Clearer?

Well, that's FINAL WARS for you.

There are moments where the film seems to be unintentionally bad. Then intentionally bad. Then unintentionally good. In fact, it so often switched between so-bad-it's-good and so-bad-it's-just-confusing, that I'm not entirely sure if I enjoyed watching it or not. I know that, like the rest of the audience (except for the girl sitting next to me, clearly dragged there by her boyfriend), I was laughing throughout most of it, but that could mean anything.

It was fun watching the MAN IN SUIT! MAN IN SUIT! MAIN IN SUIT! battling all the other monsters (not *all* the other monsters, grumble grumble). The Godzilla vs GINO fight (and the following line) is brilliant. Lines like "I escaped somehow!" had us all in tears. The opening montage covering the history of Godzilla was pretty cool. The Melbourne/Sydney rivalry was most evident when thunderous Melbourne applause greeted the destruction of Sydney's landmarks (easily the most popular moments).

As great as moments like this are, there's a lot of crap to get through. There's well over an hour in the first half of the film where Godzilla just doesn't turn up, and we're forced to sit patiently through a bunch of nonsense about Aliens being destructive, then peaceful, then suspicious, then destructive again. There's a fair bit lifted straight out of THE MATRIX, and I don't even know what that whole Son of Godzilla section was about. It's a bit of a mishmash, and seems to revel in its unintentional badness instead of its intentional badness.

I don't know, perhaps I'm being too critical. It's a frigging Godzilla movie, after all. If you're a fan of the Toho, you'll probably get a kick out of lines like: "Sorry - I'm a vegetarian!" The problem is that there's a kickarse GODZILLA film waiting to be made, and this really isn't it.

KUNG FU HUSTLE

(contains some spoilers)

Continuing this column's theme of confusing Asian cult movies is Stephen Chow's KUNG FU HUSTLE. Chow was there to introduce the film himself, which was pretty cool, but nothing I could get overly excited about given I haven't seen a single one of his films. I'd been hanging out for SHAOLIN SOCCER, but there was some confusion as to whether the print we had in Melbourne was the snipped, English-dub version or the original. Crappy dubs can ruin a film. My HOWL'S review in the last MIFF report mentioned my experiences watching PRINCESS MONONOKE: in its original form, it was a life-changing experience; in its English dub, it was pretty bad.

I was, however, looking forward to HUSTLE. Though I can't remember seeing a trailer for it, or anything promotional beyond the poster, I for some reason had it in mind that the film would be a combination of dance and martial arts. I kept flashing back to Jackie Chan's excellent Gene Kelly homage in SHANGHAI KNIGHTS, and hoped we'd see a more stylised version of that.

Well, there's no actual dancing beyond the inexplicable toe-tapping of the Axe Gang, all of which takes place over the opening credits. Beyond that, there's no more dancing. Fair enough. I can get on board with that. So long as it's a good film, my preconceptions don't have to interfere with my enjoyment of the film.

What did interfere with my enjoyment of the film was the fact that the film seemed to make absolutely no sense. I couldn't possibly give you an accurate or straightforward rundown of the story, and I was paying attention and everything.

Chow and his writers seem to have come up with a bunch of cool scenes which contained ideas for plots, but had no idea how to thread them into a collective, coherent story. That said, those individual scenes are very, very cool.

One of the potential plotlines involves three seemingly-docile residents of a community each revealing, during an attack by the deadly and overwhelming Axe Gang, their real identities as kung fu masters. They are subsequently told to leave by the matriarch of the community; a frightening-looking woman who sucks down cigarettes and commits near-fatal spousal abuse.

In another scene, the Axe Gang hires two mystical, musician assassins to exact revenge upon the three kung fu masters. It is during this scene that we discover the matriarch and her abused husband are, in fact, even deadlier kung fu masters.

Now, these scenes are cool. They're exceptionally cool. The instrument that the musician assassins play is brilliantly-conceived, and the fights are superb. Once those exceptionally cool scenes finish, we're returned to the main story (whatever it happens to be at the time), and any good will that Chow has built up is mostly squandered as the audience tries to make sense of the thing.

Peppered between these scenes is the story of a man (Chow) who wants to be a kung fu master, or part of the axe gang, or something, but is such a loser he can't manage to beat up a spectacle-clad businessman on the tram. He meanders in and out of scenes, disappearing for chunks before reappearing suddenly. He continues to be a loser, up until a vital scene at the end, where, for some reason, he suddenly becomes a kung fu master.

I'm painting this film as a massive disappointment, but it's not. It's just uneven. It meanders between cool (the Hannibal Lecter-style revelation of what I assume is the film's big bad), random (the Road Runner scene) and thoroughly confusing (uh, Chow stuck in a metal box above some traffic lights punching it from the inside... for some reason). I think a lot of people will dig the film for its excellently-directed martial arts sequences, and that's fine. But a lot of films, particularly Asian films, seem to be getting passing grades because, well, Asian films are cool. It's almost as if HUSTLE wants to trade off that cultural barrier; if an English language film contained such unevenness, would we be as willing to sing its praises? I doubt it.

A DIRTY SHAME

I have not had the pleasure of PINK FLAMINGOS, nor HAIRSPRAY, nor CRY BABY, nor any John Waters film. I had some idea of what to expect (his notoriety is infamous - note that sentence can be inverted for grammatical fun!), but wasn't fully prepared for it. A DIRTY SHAME was my first brush with John Waters.

An interesting brush it was, too.

In one of my other lives, I teach filmmaking at a high school. I work with students from year seven through to twelve, and, no offence to Mr Waters (though I suspect I might be saying that in vain), A DIRTY SHAME is something I expect one of my year nines to come up with.

I guess some part of me was hoping, in futility it seems, for a clever sex comedy instead of a puerile sex comedy. Most of the jokes may as well be actors coyly winking at the screen and whispering "sex!", because they jokes just aren't there. I think I laughed at about fifty per cent of the jokes, which may seem like a high percentage given my apparent contempt of the film, but some of it does work. What does work can pretty much be attributed to the actors.

Tracey Ullman, Johnny Knoxville, Selma Blair and Chris Isaak make the film. Their performances are all brilliant, and if there's a reason to see this film, it's them. If there's another reason, it's Blair's, er, enhancements.

Look, it's got its moments, and those moments are pretty funny (the scene where Knoxville discovers the new form of sex he's been searching for all this time is pretty hilarious), to get to them we're forced to wade through some pretty juvenile stuff. I don't know, maybe that's why so many people are drawn to Waters. It's just a pity it's not very clever, especially given we've seen smart, funny sex comedies. Woody Allen's EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX is a good example, and one that Waters seems to be fond of (Alan J. Wendl's baby-obsessed officer clearly a reference to the bloke in EVERYTHING who dressed up in women's clothing... and I can't believe I've forgotten his name, but you know who I mean).

The film has a decent amount in it to recommend, but - as with the surprising amount of sex the film *doesn't* contain - it promises more than it delivers.

Peace out,

Latauro

kisses?