Father Geek here with our man in Paris... Grozilla who has just returned to that wonderful city from the Cannes Film Fest and has sent ol'Father Geek the following report on the flicks he caught while there...
Yes, the french guy with so bad english writing is back, and late, for reviewing the latest Cannes film festival. So it’s wrapped for this year. La Croisette is emptying of any journalist, director, producer, PR, media people, giving it back to old retired, usual habitants of La Riviera. What happened in the Festival ? Well not much. No revelations, no brilliant newcomer, quite no scandals. Just the quite daily laughs by reading in Daily Variety Todd McCarthy's diary anger towards the festival, French critics , Danish directors, movies, the world and so on. Thanks Todd. I'm afraid you become a very bitter man, but you made this festival full of laughing bursts with your loathing articles.Anyway, before returning to some real life - Cannes being some weird non-sensical country on its own- here's some words on I saw there during the last eleven days, in parallel sidebars and film market. I avoid on purpose to write about almost all films in competition, just because they were just dull, boring, stuff…
Matrix reloaded
Uh-oh. So the Wachowski's bros. decide to write some new gospel, according to the videogame-rave party generation. Strange but I don't buy this deviant holy trinity posing George Lucas and Sega as new gods.. I'm sure teenagers will love it and understand all this mumblejumble techno-religious stuff. I don't. I was expected some brilliant action movie, not a preaching. If my jaw dropped it's not by seeing the carchasing or the 1 against 100 brawl - efficient but so badly photographed- but by this moronic subtext. anyway I have to admit there's more cinema in one minute of this than in any second of Star wars latest episode. But maybe I'm just too old for this.
Mortadelo & Filemon
Amazing adaptation of a cult-spanish comic book. Don't bother to find any screenplay here, it's just about getting two moron pals in stupid trouble. This is live cartoon. Fun, fast, brainless. The most astonishing being perfect special effects by thousands but very well used. Tex Avery's got a future. Even if Mortadelo & filemon is a bit exhausting by being non-stop hysteria.
5 in the Afternoon
What about being a woman in post-Taliban Afghanistan? Good question asked by Samira Makhmalbaf in her latest effort. Alas she never answers to it. As did his father in his Kandahar two years ago, the Iranian filmmaker is just doin' some exotism for occidental wievers. This is some beautiful postcard, not the political movie expected.
Kitchen Stories
Ever dreamt of seeing some Gary Larson strip getting alive ? Well this Nordic film almost succeded to be that. This quite mute story of growing friendship between an old grumpy guy and an employee of some statistic office share with Larson some absurdity before being very touching. Sweet film.
Wonderful Days
As many, I've been amazed by the awesome trailer of this Korean CGI animated film. A bit less when I saw the entire film. Is it because the 2D animation of the character is poor ? Because of this story with a huge taste of déjà vu ? Anyway this is good stuff, pleasant to watch but can't be compared to any masterpiece of japanimation.
American Splendor
I had never heard of Harvey Pekar before seeing this. But I won't forget it after this screening. Between documentary and fiction, American Splendor is also some kind of mix between Adaptation and Ghost World. Adding all the emotional context of both. Clever without being smart ass, this is one of the most moving film I've seen so far this year. Paul Giamatti as the alter ego of Pekar proving once more the truly genius actor he is.
Jeepers Keepers 2
The best boogyman created these last years is back. Not the talent. This sequel is for sure enjoyable but far less creepy than the original. Overall because roles are reverted this time. It's not anymore about the humans but about the monster. And how to destroy it by any means necessary. What was very disturbing in the first film was the odd way Salva describes this brother and sister relationship. Here this is more mainstream : the kids are just meat for the starving creature. As if the success of Jeepers creepers make this sequel having to be more light, more classicly done. One very neat idea though : since we know this hungry boogeyman is undestroyable, why not givin’ all the occasion possible to its prey to hurt him ? Kudos to Ray Wise a new kind of hunter…
The Mother
I knew since Notting hill that Roger Michell was more a yes man. It was confirmed with Changing lanes and now again with this twisted love tale. Granny & Granpa are visting children in London. Granpa dies, Granny moves to one her daughter’s place. And fall in love with her lover. Yes there’s sex with a mature lady. The mother is kind of strange film apart from usual mainstream brit stuff. If only it wasn’t lowered by standing in the shadow of Mike Leigh’s work…
Elephant
Don't wantalk about the issue of Van Sant having insight or not in this film inspired by Columbine slaughter. Too soon for that. For now, I just know this is a very powerful movie about lost youth. Not so daring at expected, the director having just remembered some experimentations in 60’s european free cinema. But who cares if this is genuine or not. Elephant IS a deeply moving thing, some proof that cinema can be visual poetry.
Gozu
Takashi Miike’s being acknowledged by the auteur festival ? That’s happening now. The screening of Gozu was enjoyably wild. This is pure Miike style. Beginning with a thug exterminating an anti-Yakuza dog and ending by some cronenbergian delivery of an adult guy by a short woman. Between other strange and mad events occured. Really fun but with the feeling of deja vu from the guy. Don’t what was better : to see the usual Miike sense of excess on screen or the face of some of people in the audience who didn’t encounter before his universe…
Beyond Reanimator
If this isn’t as good as expected, these new adventures of Dr West is good news : Brian Yuzna is still obsessed by the same stuff : twisted sexual relationship with women, morbid sens of humor. Anyway, this third episode is very talky before the show really begins in its last thirty minutes. Very funny gory cameo by Santiago Segura. Don’t miss the end credits including a kung fu fight between a dick and a rat !
Wrong Turn
Young adults being chased by cannibal men from the woods. Yes this is too well known ground. But it’s fun, fast (less than 80 minutes including credits) and gory. Of course brainless but what did you expected from a slasher ? Maybe not a very good scene of escaping by jumping from tree to tree. Or some convincing act by actors in this kind of movie. More surprising than Eliza Dushku, Desmond Harrington is a truly discovery. Watch for this guy in the future…
Interstella 5555
Do you remember the mid-eighties when Russel Mulcahy did some videolongform with Duran Duran music ? Daft Punk, very hip french techno music band, did the same with their latest LP. Of course it’s always good news to see new work from Leiji Matsumoto. But this 55 minutes video becomes boring and boring, when it hasn’t got the soul of this genius of Japanimation. It has been ordered by the band to hail (even in the dumb screenplay they wrote) their glory, not his.
Dogville
I’m fed up with Lars Von Trier. What’s the point of inventing very daring way of filming (no sets, just some marks drawned with chalk on the ground) if the purpose is just for having a childish revenge on any one who criticized his previous film. Dancer in the dark was indeed, to me anyway, a bad movie, some tearjerker stuff. The danish guy assumed publicly that he has done Dogville for giving a lesson to the american press who asked him how he dared to make a movie about America without ever going there. With this start, Nicole Kidman and Paul Bettany could be as brillant as they can (and they are indeed), Dogville is just a manipulating movie, a pervert one revealing its dark raison d’être in its tedious, morally disgusting last part.
Tiresia
Some guy kidnaps a prostitue transexual. Once he had lose his beauty, guy makes him blind and dump him for dead above a small village. There, the tranny becomes an oracle. Bertrand Bonnello’s third effort is very peculiar. Very (too much ?) intellectual in its opening and closing, Tiresia becomes very powerful in its middle part, kind of twisted version of The collector meeting Bresson or Brisseau’s style. Of course this is just for the auteur audience niche, but this film has some uncommon beauty and strength. To begin with very good acting from Laurent Lucas, Clara Choveaux and Thalgo Thiales, the two lasts playing two sides of the same character.
Struggle
If you’re fan of Michael Haneke and Ulrich Seidl (Dogdays) works, here’s a film who mixes their influences by showing in first part the daily life of clandestine polish workers in austria, and the second some very odd sexual obsession. Both explaining some self loathing about Austria…
Easy riders, raging bulls
I expected this to be a good film version of Peter Biskind wonderful book. I was wrong. This is just a poor summarization of it. As if the shooting of The exorcist or Apocalypse now have never existed. As if Robert Altman and Bob Rafelson were pure angels without egos. Only interest of this lousy docu is Margot Kidder and John Milius interviews. Quote from Milius : « when George (Lucas) was working on Star Wars, he always said how boring this was, that the solution was to do some porno. If Star Wars hadn’t been so successful, George would have be now at the head of a porn empire. And maybe richer than he actually is ».
Time of the wolf
I wasn’t fond of Michael Haneke’s films. Until The piano teacher. This year he presented his latest effort. Some lighter, more accessible things in a very smart post-apocalyptic story. Something happened (we’ll never know what) that led the civilized western world into chaos. No more electricity, no more water on the tabs. How to reconstruct the humanity ? Press booed the film maybe just because Haneke did a less didactical, more mainstream film. But with the same strength he always used. Proof is the very disturbing opening. Or the brillant way it’s shot, in a semi-deep obscurity (remember Panic room’s visual mood ? Here’s better one). Even if there’s still some bullshiting metaphoric parable on the decline of western world. This may be the huge success of Haneke when it’ll be released by being in the reach of everyone.
House of the dead
I almost left the screening room after the first twenty unbearable minutes of this video game adaptation. If I have done so, I would have missed some stupid but really fun illustration of what a shoot’em up game could be. It’s basic : living dead has to be destroy by any gory means. Period. Once you admitted this rule, House of dead, a very moronic film, is really enjoyable. Even some very lousy Jurgen Prochnow and Clint Howard. Better, it has some good final using a reverse very low budget BulletTime effect more efficient than all the technology in Matrix reloaded. Just be careful of putting back your brain when exiting this B movie….
The Brown Bunny
That was the big buzz of this festival. Vincent Gallo second film was very coldly received here. Mainly this was perceived as some very egotrip from the guy. Well, I admit that first hour and half seeing only Gallo on some road trip, seducing any girls he encounters, riding motobike endlessly or looking for a turtleneck in his van in a 4 minute scene can procure this feeling. As does the last part, where he’s given a blowjob by Chloé Sevigny without stand-ins for his cock or her mouth. But where does this magnetism come, this moving to tear feeling of seeing a sad tale of an abandoned man come from ? Yes, Brown bunny is irritating more than one time but it has the same guts of Monte Hellman, Michelangelo Antonioni and John Cassavetes films. I’m still not sure if I want to see it again, but I’m definitely sure I’ve seen with this film a pure moment of cinema.
Fear x
All the buzz and rumours about this Nicolas Winding Refn film won’t convince me this isn't just some show-off, snobby imitation of film noir. Remember this so-so Peter Hyams’ film called The star chamber ? Well this is a disguised remake using some David Lynch technique. Yawning.
Mystic River
I need to see this Eastwood epic out of Cannes context to have a truly opinion. Seeing it at the end of the festival, after so many near-experimental stuff in competition blurs my feeling towards it. Because it’s done in a very old fashion way. That doesn’t withdraw its obvious strength. I just fond Tim Robbins overacting in an actor’s studio’s mood. Anyway after a few days, I’m still overwhelmed by the disturbing blackness of the finale. Laura Linney’s last scene being one the most terrifying ever seen. Forget Unforgiven, this is real dark vision of world. I heard that Clint refused to be Harry a sixth time, explaining he’s too old now to do this again and that he had more adult stories to tell. Mystic river is truly made for a mature audience. I guess once I’ll see it again in a less strange environment than Cannes, I’ll praise it as a masterpiece.
