Boner's Melbourne Film Fest blitz - 23-ish films in 10 days

[Boner M]

Another year, another festival thread. Here's the list of shit I'll be seeing and reviewing, in this exact order.

JEANNE DIELMAN...
PIERROT LE FOU
IT CAME FROM KUCHAR
HOME
CHASER, THE
STILL WALKING
ON|OFF: MARK STEWART
I NEED THAT RECORD!
TREELESS MOUNTAIN
EXPLODING GIRL, THE
HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT
LIKE YOU KNOW IT ALL
LOVE EXPOSURE
FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSE
WE LIVE IN PUBLIC
BLUE FILM WOMAN
BEACHES OF AGNES, THE
DOGTOOTH
NUN, THE
WHITE RIBBON, THE
EROS PLUS MASSACRE
EVERYONE ELSE
ANTICHRIST

I can't guarantee I'll review all of 'em, or three of 'em, but I'll do my best.

[baby doll]

Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles and Pierrot le fou are pretty awesome, but I don't know if you'll like them. I'm the only person I know who was disappointed by La Religieuse, which is especially odd since I'm such a Rivette nut. In fact, along with Ne touchez pas la hache (another relatively short French lit adaptation... maybe there's a pattern here), it's the only film of his I didn't like so far.

As I've said elsewhere around this site, I thought Treeless Mountain was a let-down because it was too much like Kim's previous film, although I'll probably give it a second hearing eventually. Still Walking is a turd; appeal denied.

As far as the rest, I'm looking forward to Les Plages d'Agnès just because I'm a total slut for Varda, and Dogtooth and The Exploding Girl based on all the hype. I'll check out Antichrist, Everyone Else, and The White Ribbon whenever I can, but for now, I'm keeping my expectations low. And I seem to remember reading about We Live in Public in Cinema-Scope a while back, but the description didn't make much of an impact on me.

[Boner M]

See bd? Sometimes films can be worth watching.

I'l trying to post my long-ass Jeanne Dielman review at the moment, but it ain't working on this slow connection. Seems like I'll have to do it in little morsels...

[Winston*]

I'm not going to make a film festival thread because I don't want to, so I'm just going to post my ratings for the films I've seen in my current film festival in your thread.

The Secret of Kells **1/2
The Chaser - ***
Mary and Max - - ****
Departures - **
Flame and Citron - ***1/2
Still Walking ***
Moon ***1/2

Still to come

The Limits of Control
The First Day of the Rest of Your Life
Antichrist
The White Ribbon

Think I can guarantee I won't review any of them.

[Spinal]

Flame and Citron - ***1/2


Awesome. Can't wait.

[Melville]

I'm looking forward to that Jeanne Dielman review. And a review of Antichrist.

[Boner M]

I'm looking forward to that Jeanne Dielman review. And a review of Antichrist.
It's not posting at all. Even the individual paragraphs The other two posts I've made in this thread took roughly 30 seconds each (this one will too, presumably). Aaarrggh.

[Melville]

It's not posting at all. Even the individual paragraphs The other two posts I've made in this thread took roughly 30 seconds each (this one will too, presumably). Aaarrggh.
I recommend giving up for the moment and reading my review of Love Streams.

[Winston*]

It's not posting at all. Even the individual paragraphs The other two posts I've made in this thread took roughly 30 seconds each (this one will too, presumably). Aaarrggh.

Was it boring? I bet it was boring. But the good kind of boring, or something.

[Boner M]

Was it boring? I bet it was boring. But the good kind of boring, or something.
Weirdly enough, the only walkouts happened toward the end. You've stayed for three hours, surely 20 minutes longer won't kill ya?

[Derek]

That lineup is full of potential disappointments. I look forward to reading the extended thoughts of your disappointing experiences, but I'm fully prepared to be disappointed by those too.

:pritch:

[B-side]

I'm looking forward to that Jeanne Dielman review. And a review of Antichrist.

This is what I came in here to say.

[Stay Puft]

HENRI-GEORGES CLOUZOT

What is this? The restoration or whatever of L'Enfer? I remember reading about that (I think it's playing in Toronto).

[Philosophe_rouge]

LOVE EXPOSURE

[Boner M]

Spoilers herein.

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (Chantal Akerman, 1975)

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_E9YcWkAQSfQ/ShIGroRV0MI/AAAAAAAAH5Q/1ZDDaqteVbE/s400/jeanne_dielman.jpg

In the early stages of Jeanne Dielman, we see a light flickering from an unspecified source on the walls of the titular character’s apartment. At first glance, it could be the headlights of a car passing outside the window, but the longer we spend time in this space, and the longer the pattern of flickering persists, it becomes clear that it’s the light of a sign outside – an altogether less human source, that will become part of the environment of routine, triviality and inevitability that leads to Jeanne’s psychological deterioration over the course of the hypnotically gruelling 3+ hours we spend with her.

The first words of dialogue uttered by her are an order: to her teenage son, she asks him not read at the dinner table. The discipline she imposes on herself carries over to him as well. The two are – to borrow a chestnut – far away, yet close; most touchingly displayed when they converse guilelessly but distantly about topics like sex and their family’s history before bed. Their dinners involve them eating mechanically together, each collecting and consuming their spoonfuls of food in a comically staccato fashion that recalls separate pistons of train wheels joining in motion momentarily, before spinning again out of sync. Her encounters with her clients as a prostitute take place offscreen, transpiring in the time between a jump cut from the corridor in the afternoon daylight to evening darkness. Art cinema has a history of actively unerotic sex scenes as an illustration of human incompatibility, but Akerman upstages that device by simply not showing them at all, as if Jeanne’s mundane routines register more vividly. Though ostensibly a feminist film, the men in the film are not vilified – Akerman is not creating a polemic so much as intense empathy with the quietly oppressed women that Jeanne serves as an avatar for.

Akerman’s greatest coup is reinvigorating all the dubious virtues that are traditionally associated with minimalist cinema, as well as adding a few of her own. A sudsy dish appearing on the drying rack, Jeanne dropping the shoe polisher while scrubbing, leaving the lid of the cash dish off, and other blips in the various routines perform as substitutes for the hoarier shorthands of horror that we associate with narrative cinema. Akerman not only succeeds in lulling us into a state of hypnosis before unnerving us with the slightest tweak of Jeanne’s routine, but also in developing an intense alertness in the viewer that stays long after the film finishes.

Though the film flirts with familiarity at time, alternately recalling Repulsion and Red Desert, it is a singular experience that never feels like a Warhol-ian formalist stunt (which is sounds like on paper). There is a perverse sensual pleasure to be had from the accumulation of repetitions and differences that are presented to us. Akerman understands the concept of routine as alternately a thing of comfort as well as resignation from life’s more edifying-if-risky endeavors (Jeanne explains to her son that she never wants to adjust to a new man after the death of her husband), and for a while the film is something of a game of ‘spot the difference’, before it becomes harrowing.

For all of Akerman’s formal rigor/precision, there is also a great deal of willful sloppiness in her filmmaking. Boom mic errors abound, cameras are reflected in the myriad of shiny surfaces (kettles, cabinet glasses, etc) on display, while passer-by’s can be seen in the street scenes looking distractingly into the camera. The easiest defense of such uncharacteristic errors is that it’s a Brechtian distancing tactic, but Akerman has already replaced drama with experiential empathy, so there is nothing to be distanced from. Rather, by having no pretense toward separating the ontological world from the film’s diegesis, Akerman creates the sense of Jeanne moving through her routines defiantly as well as delusionally, a performer going through the motions in every sense.

It could be said that Akerman shows a relative lack of imagination by having Jeanne resort to murder as the logical outcome of her psychological deterioration. But this thudding inevitability is part of the point. By the time we see a blood-stained Jeanne in the film’s final shot, as she collects herself at the dinner table. Seyrig open and closes her eyes, bobs her head up and down as if in a voodoo trance, and we are similarly left reeling, contemplating her actions in relation to the preceding, and held in suspense as we wait for something (a doorbell ring?) to awake her from her state of mania… needless to say, it never happens.

[Boner M]

LOVE EXPOSURE
Probable the film I'm anticipating most, along with the Haneke. Although it'll feel weird watching a 4-hour opus so soon after the Akerman (I'm also seeing Eros Plus Massacre, a 3-hour extravaganza of Japanese new wave perversion.


What is this? The restoration or whatever of L'Enfer? I remember reading about that (I think it's playing in Toronto).
Yeah, that's it. I just lazily copied that list of films from my receipt.

[Duncan]

I don't really disagree with anything you say in the Jeanne Dielman... review, Boner. And yet, I still found long stretches of it a chore to sit through. I like replaying certain scenes in my head. The letter reading, some of those sex talks with her son, the baby crying, the stunned ambivalence about the overcooked potatoes, the penultimate scene, the ultimate scene. Basically all the parts that were funny, creepy, and some really gorgeous street photography as well. But there's all that other stuff in between that is necessary, but very trying. The second hour, especially, since she isn't really losing it yet (or maybe she misses a light switch), but it's still the same stuff over and over, and I find I can only really appreciate those scenes by telling myself that the parts I really like wouldn't work without them. Which is true, but it's such a cold way to appreciate a film. Anyway, respect it, like it, don't love it.

[Melville]

Great review. I was fascinated for at least two thirds of Jeanne Dielman, and I agree with all your thoughts about it, but like Duncan, I found that the aesthetic and the details of the tedium could remain fascinating for only so long. Though I'm not sure how else it could have accomplished what it did, and I admire its chutzpah in going so far with its vision.

The most entertaining part of my viewing experience was the conversation between two middle-aged women sitting behind me. Towards the end, they kept repeating to one another, in seeming amazement, "there must be some point to all this". That continued right through to the murder scene, at which point they started saying things like "wait, what's happening? What did she do? Did she...? Oh my god, she killed him! Why did she kill him?!" It was pretty funny.

[Boner M]

I actually agree with both of you that the aesthetic does wear a little thin in the end, and that's why I haven't given it full marks. It's all part of the design, but then that design is one of the reasons I just can't love it like I do News From Home. Still, it's lingering in the memory like a motherfucker.

Also, is it just me, or is Marge's breakdown in the Cypress Creek/Hank Scorpio epidose of the Simpsons an Akerman reference? There's even a scene where she wakes up Maggie just like Seyrig does in the film.

[Boner M]

Added Land of Madness (Luc Moullet), Embodiment of Evil (Coffin Joe's latest...he's stil alive?!), Blood Appears (Taxi Driver but even bloodier, sez a review) and The Maid (strong reviews everywhere) to my schedule. Dunno if I'll get around to them, but I had four free sessions on my pass. Damn these ten days are gonna be exhausting.

More reviews coming tomorrow.

[baby doll]

Embodiment of Evil (Coffin Joe's latest...he's stil alive?!)I had never even heard of the guy until a few weeks ago. Apparently Guy Maddin's a fan.

[Boner M]

I had never even heard of the guy until a few weeks ago. Apparently Guy Maddin's a fan.
I've seen one of his films.... it was either At Midnight I'll Steal Your Soul or This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse. Can't remember which one (even after a look at the plot synopses of both on the IMDb), but it was a pretty neat slice of bargain basement horror. Kinda Kuchar-esque - who I learned Maddin is also a fan of from last night's doco.

[MacGuffin]

BM, have you seen a Sono?

[Boner M]

BM, have you seen a Sono?
Nope. Should I?

[MacGuffin]

Nope. Should I?

I haven't either. Love Exposure looks pretty interesting though.

[baby doll]

I've seen one of his films.... it was either At Midnight I'll Steal Your Soul or This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse. Can't remember which one (even after a look at the plot synopses of both on the IMDb), but it was a pretty neat slice of bargain basement horror. Kinda Kuchar-esque - who I learned Maddin is also a fan of from last night's doco.That's what I hear, that his films are basically all the same. After all, how big a difference can there be between stealing a soul (at midnight) and possessing a corpse (at night)? If he really wanted to spice things up, he could make a film called I Legally Purchased Your Soul at Noon or That Day, I'll Relinquish Your Corpse.

[Boner M]

That's what I hear, that his films are basically all the same. After all, how big a difference can there be between stealing a soul (at midnight) and possessing a corpse (at night)? If he really wanted to spice things up, he could make a film called I Legally Purchased Your Soul at Noon or That Day, I'll Relinquish Your Corpse.
The list of alternate titles for This Night...:

... aka This Night Will Make Your Corpse Incarnate
... aka Tonight I Will Eat Your Corpse
... aka Tonight I Will Enter Your Corpse
... aka Tonight I Will Make Your Corpse Turn Red
... aka Tonight I Will Paint in Flesh Colour

[baby doll]

The list of alternate titles for This Night...:

... aka This Night Will Make Your Corpse Incarnate
... aka Tonight I Will Eat Your Corpse
... aka Tonight I Will Enter Your Corpse
... aka Tonight I Will Make Your Corpse Turn Red
... aka Tonight I Will Paint in Flesh ColourEww.

[Boner M]

Reviews for the underwhelming last few days (shut up bd, I wasn't salivating over any of these in the first place):

HOME (Ursula Meier, 2008)
Really wish this film worked for me more than it did. It’s got a great overall tone, trading in both clinical detachment and messy, warm naturalism; the depiction of family interaction is both credible and strange (or strange in its credibility), and Huppert and Gourmet are excellent as always, as are the kid actors. I guess it’s the film’s allegory that didn’t work for me; the ways that the re-opening of the highway affects the way the family navigate their space – and by extension, how they conduct their lives – felt slightly arbitrary and not always convincing, with the extended metaphor in the film’s climax coming off contrived and unimaginative. Ursula Meier’s a name to watch, though. **1/2

IT CAME FROM KUCHAR (Kroot, 2009)
Two fascinating and loveable characters (avant-camp filmmakers Mike and George Kuchar, best known for Hold Me While I’m Naked) in a doco that wisely lets the assortment of interviewees (Egoyan, Maddin, and Waters among the devoted) and film clips speak for itself. Both filmmakers were nig names from the 60’s avant-garde, but their worship of OTT camp and melodrama separated them from the more high-minded likes of Brakhage, Snow, Frampton, et al; rather than camp with an experimental sensibility, their films are more like camp that’s pushed to such a ridiculous extreme that it can only qualify under the blanket term of ‘avant-garde’. Not a revelatory doco like Crumb, but in the same ballpark of studies about American fringe art, and just oodles of fun to watch. ***

ON|OFF: MARK STEWART, FROM THE POP GROUP TO MAFFIA (Some Mark Stewart fan, 2009)
Standard music doco; distinguished by being shot on shitty consumer grade video and edited in a pretty neat stream-of-consciousness fashion that mimics Mark Stewart’s own dada-ist musical stylings. Probably better as something to stumble across on youtube than a film festival selection, but hearing bass-heavy, layered songs like “Liberty City” and “We Are Time” on cinema surround sound made it worthwhile. **1/2

STILL WALKING (Kore-eda, 2008)
Early on I thought I was going to hate this, with its endless banal nostalgic chatter and borderline pornographic scenes of food preperation (the fact I was starving at the time didn’t help), but then the superficial sense of comfort gets replaced with more troubling emotional undercurrents, culminating in a bruising scene in which the family’s aging matriarch confesses her intense blind hatred for a relative she uses as a scapegoat for her son’s death. It’s a scene worthy of Pialat, and Kore-eda manages to keep a fine balance between eloqently expressing the reservoirs of regret, pain and sadness that lurk beneath the placid surfaces of his characters, as well as evoking the ineffable beauties and pleasures of life that makes them keep on keeping on. May improve on a second viewing. ***

THE CHASER (Na, 2008)
Maybe if Memories of Murder didn’t exist, I’d like this film more. The basic premise that is actually a pretty novel way of depicting the incompetence of Seoul police – the force is so messed up that catching a serial killer is easier than both keeping him detained and locating his last victim. Unfortunately, a string of ridiculous coincidences and clichés mean that involvement wanes, so that only the individual set pieces manage to grab attention (and yes, there are Korean tonal shifts aplenty). A rare case in which I wouldn’t mind seeing a Hollywood remake, providing the right people are involved. **1/2

LAND OF MADNESS (Moullet, 2009)
I’m pretty sure this movie isn’t very good, but some of it’s so hilarious and weirdly fascinating that I almost want to recommend it. Ex-Cahiers writer Luc Moullet sets out to find out why the Southern Alps of France are so rife with cases of dementia-addled murder, and along the way realises that this diagnosis probably says more about him than anything. The thing is, rather than going the poetic/essay-film route that you’d expect given his background and the subject matter, he pursues his theory using the most standard, banal doco tropes imaginable, staying loyal to the form to point that the film acquires a tone of deadpan mockery of the idea of ‘documentary objectivity’. Anything resembling truth or insight is completely undermined in a final scene that I won’t spoil, but made me laugh my way out of the exits. An inconsquential film with no compelling reason to exist, and yet I somehow don’t regret seeing it. **

[MacGuffin]

LAND OF MADNESS (Moullet, 2009)
I’m pretty sure this movie isn’t very good, but some of it’s so hilarious and weirdly fascinating that I almost want to recommend it. Ex-Cahiers writer Luc Moullet sets out to find out why the Southern Alps of France are so rife with cases of dementia-addled murder, and along the way realises that this diagnosis probably says more about him than anything. The thing is, rather than going the poetic/essay-film route that you’d expect given his background and the subject matter, he pursues his theory using the most standard, banal doco tropes imaginable, staying loyal to the form to point that the film acquires a tone of deadpan mockery of the idea of ‘documentary objectivity’. Anything resembling truth or insight is completely undermined in a final scene that I won’t spoil, but made me laugh my way out of the exits. An inconsquential film with no compelling reason to exist, and yet I somehow don’t regret seeing it. **

I want to see this, but it seems like there is a lot of hate for Luc Moullet. I don't really understand the bolded portion. Are you saying that the fact that he sees the Southern Alps as crime-infested, he determines, says more about his life viewpoint than it does about the Southern Alps?

[Ezee E]

I hope Flame & Citron gets a decent release. I can't really see anyone disliking it. And that goes for all tastes. Scar, Spinal, Wats, they'll all love it I think.

[Boner M]

Are you saying that the fact that he sees the Southern Alps as crime-infested, he determines, says more about his life viewpoint than it does about the Southern Alps?
Yes to the former. He even acknowledges it in the film, and opens with the words "I'm not a normal person". I actually wish the film followed his own whims a bit more; there's too many long interviews with villagers reciting stories that I didn't entirely follow or care about.

[Winston*]

"Jesus Christ!" @ Antichrist.

[Boner M]

"Jesus Christ!" @ Antichrist.
Crowd reactions?

[Qrazy]

Crowd reactions?

Pierrot le Fou thoughts?

[Boner M]

Pierrot le Fou thoughts?
I don't really have any solid ones, since I saw it upon arriving in town with after a Greyhound trip with no sleep the night before. Although, given the film is less a narrative than a string of ideas, it's probably not a bad way to appreciate it. Has a little too much of the twee cutesiness than made A Woman is a Woman a bit of a chore, but the good scenes - namely, the discussion between Belmondo and the dude on the pier about the non-diegetic music - are among the best Godard's filmed, and it looks beauteous.

[Qrazy]

I don't really have any solid ones, since I saw it upon arriving in town with after a Greyhound trip with no sleep the night before. Although, given the film is less a narrative than a string of ideas, it's probably not a bad way to appreciate it. Has a little too much of the twee cutesiness than made A Woman is a Woman a bit of a chore, but the good scenes - namely, the discussion between Belmondo and the dude on the pier about the non-diegetic music - are among the best Godard's filmed, and it looks beauteous.

Yeah that is a great scene.

[Winston*]

Crowd reactions?

Some very audible collective groaning (more male than female at one specific moment) I was near the front so I can't gauge walkouts.

Btw The White Ribbon - pretty masterpiecey.

[transmogrifier]

Btw The White Ribbon - pretty masterpiecey.

How does Haneke sit with you in general?

[Winston*]

How does Haneke sit with you in general?
He rocks IMO.

[transmogrifier]

He rocks IMO.

So this is his best? Close to?

[Boner M]

Don't have time to write anything substantial, but just thought I'd pop in to say that Love Exposure and Dogtooth have broken the non-mind-blowing streak of my festival experience. Both are effin' crazy too, in totally different ways.

[transmogrifier]

Don't have time to write anything substantial, but just thought I'd pop in to say that Love Exposure and Dogtooth have broken the non-mind-blowing streak of my festival experience. Both are effin' crazy too, in totally different ways.

D'Angelo loved Dogtooth, I think, as well.

[Winston*]

So this is his best? Close to?

Most of the films I've seen of his were viewed prior to the time period of my life where I feel like I can now have a proper opinion of a movie I saw but sure, it seems like it could be.

[Pop Trash]

So you didn't think much of Exploding Girl? That sounded interesting.

[Boner M]

So you didn't think much of Exploding Girl? That sounded interesting.
It's a pretty tedious depiction of collegiate ennui - a subject that has NEVER been touched on in independent cinema - redeemed by an adorable lead actress (Zoe Kazan, or Elia Kazan's daughter and the girl Leo has an affair at the beginning of Revolutionary Road) and a pretty touching ending. It's not a waste of time and it has a nice, hazy late-summer mood that kinda reminded me of Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien an obvious influence on the film's style), but one more scene of the titular chick dialling her friend on her mobile to no answer, before staring dejectedly into space, and I would've punched someone.

Add another star to my rating if you love m-core and/or cute indie girls unconditionally.

[MacGuffin]

Funeral Parade of Roses (Matsumoto, 1969)

Good? Bad? Masterpiece? Awful? Anything?

[Pop Trash]

Add another star to my rating if you love m-core and/or cute indie girls unconditionally.

I would say I like, but not love, most m-core. As for cute indie girls: :pritch:

Also, I think I was totally confused about what movie this was. For some odd reason I thought it was some South American post-modern Godard type of thing. :crazy:

[Boner M]

I'll write on some more of the films once I get home; here's my top 5 of the 26 I ended up seeing:

1. LOVE EXPOSURE (Sion, 2008)

http://animemiz.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/love-exposure.jpg

By turns a trenchant, Bunuel-ian satire of regilious absurdities, a hysterical soap opera, rife with endless scenes of boner gags, cheapo martial arts sequences replete with heightened sound effects, angsty rebellious-teen melodrama, and god knows what else, coming on like a Murakami novel adapted by Arnaud Desplechin – had he be weaned on a diet of Japanese pop culture instead of cinephilic and literary touchstones. With its unlimited excess and ambition, it would be easy to deem the film a masterpiece simply by virtue of its sheer volume, but Sion remarkably manages to sustain an emotional cogency across the enormous runtime and flip-flops between genre, tone and character perspectives. Inevitably, it grows exhausting at around the 3-hour mark, but by then Sion’s already managed more exhilaration and invention than a dozen normal movies combined. Feel the loneliness!

2. EVERYONE ELSE (Ade, 2009)

http://www.stgeorgebiff.com.au/skins/biff2009/images/TickerImages/295.jpg

It's a seemingly slight subject on paper - the perils of doggedly basing your relationships on superficial unconventionalities of behaviour and interaction - but the genius of Maren Ade's screenplay lies in its incisive specificity. It's for this reason that the film doesn't feel Rohmer-esque or Woody Allen-esque or anything-esque, but rather zeroes in on an aspect of human connection that feels fresh to cinematic representation. In fact, saying it's about the 'perils' of a certain kind of behaviour sounds hopelessly reductive. More generally, it's about the difficulties for two people to establish a solid basis or language for their connection, and in turns asks whether a successful relationship needs - or can survive - this sort of reflection. Ade doesn't have her actors conform to a thesis, however; the theme of the film is conveyed throughout even the slightest gestures as much as the writing. Marvelous stuff.

3. DOGTOOTH (Lanthimos, 2009)

http://festival-cannes.france2.fr/IMG/arton45.jpg

It might not be wholly convincing as an allegory (even though that's the best way to read it), but what makes this year's Un Certain Regard winner so wonderful is how dementedly it puts across a familiar (and ultimately quite humane) message. I won't spoil the the surprises, which are plentiful - nor do I expect anyone to share my opinion that the film is humanistic - but I will say that this film is so effed-up, hilarious and endlessly fascinating that any misgivings disappear as soon as its immaculately composed images come flooding back into my mind.

4. THE WHITE RIBBON (Haneke, 2009)

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2009/5/22/1242989581088/Scene-from-Michael-Haneke-001.jpg

Probably the closest Haneke has come to making an Oscar-worthy prestige pic, this is nonetheless no way a bid for mainstream attention after the punkish stunt that was the Funny Games remake. It's as austere and stark as ever, as is his control of the material. Dialogue gracefully establishes and builds upon themes, performances are impeccable all-round, but perhaps most gratifyingly is that the characters here feel looser, laughier and generally less like puppets for a thesis than ever before. The themes of hereditary evil and the return of the repressed might not be new to his work, but the level of formal and narrative mastery are taken to a whole new level. I can't wait to see where he goes next.

5. FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES (Matsumoto, 1969)

http://www.dvdoutsider.co.uk/dvd/pix/f/fu/funeral_parade_roses2.jpg

What's great about this film is its sense of its current moment; it's a time capsule in the very best way. Matsumoto uses a myriad of techniques to depict the inability of straight-up narrative filmmaking to truly capture what it's like to truly be a part of this moment; alternating between interviews with the principle cast and crew, staged footage of the crew indulging in sex'n'drugs, and the film's main narrative (best described as gay spin on the Oedipus legend)... it'll probably take a few viewings to truly wrap my head around the film (see also; Eros + Massacre, also part of the festival's retrospective of Japanese New Wave films), but its dizzying style and sheer formal energy make me more than keen to.

[NickGlass]

I'm not sure how, when, or why this happened, but over the past month, Everyone Else has become my most anticipated film of 2009.

Oh, yeah, and I hate you.

[right_for_the_moment]

Also, I think I was totally confused about what movie this was. For some odd reason I thought it was some South American post-modern Godard type of thing. :crazy:
Thinking of Voy a explotar by chance? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1080857/


Love Exposure sounds amazing. I don't think I've encounter a single person yet who didn't love it

[B-side]

Antichrist thoughts?