Movie reviews

RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2008

This year's festival films were much better than last year. In 2007 I walked out or hardly tolerated most. This year the majority of movies were really good. The annoying element this year was the organisation: plenty of screenings were seriously delayed, sometimes more than one hour and many popular movies sold out simply due to the fact they were shown in a small screen, while the big one wasn't very crowded.

Events:

ANATOMY OF A REEL
Mark Tonderei talked about filming "Hush" - a British thriller which has sold to 25 territories already and which will be released here in the UK in March 2009. Hopefully the presentation was comprehensible to other movie makers. To me it wasn't.

DISSECTING DISTRIBUTION
Stacey Parks provided a thorough, insightful, honest, producer-oriented breakdown on how marketing, distribution and sales of film rights work. It covered all the media and most important markets. The presentation was very audience-friendly.

Short films:

THE BENT PENNY
A well-made 16-minute triple story about our attitude to a penny: its value & superstition. A lot of meaning skillfully squeezed into a short - a little pearl. Still, overacting detracts from its quality.

DIRECTIONS
15 minutes about what you can possibly do with a shopping trolley. I don't know why anyone would find the topic interesting but Greg Muller's acting make it perfectly watchable.

HOURGLASS
An 8-minute mystery story about time and fate. Amazing scenography. Perfectly watchable.

KARAOKE
A 16-minute story about looking for a job, human interactions and purpose in life. The story isn't very inspiring but Renate Serwotke's well-tuned acting makes it perfectly watchable.

LITTLE WHISPERS
A 10-minute fairy-tale about passing away. Another well-made short.

L'ENFANT PERDUE (THE LOST CHILD)
Very anxious-looking director Josephine Mackerras made an 18-minute overlong story about coping with loss and forgiveness full of hysterical overacting and emotional turmoil. Scenography hardly existent. I didn't walk out just because it felt awkward not to stay till the end of a shortie.

THE MILKY AUDITION
An 8-minute Japanese film which probably made sense only to Japanese audience. Lots of nudity, not that the fattish girls were any pretty.

Full length films:

CETVRTI COVEK (THE 4TH MAN)
Watchable. An interesting Serbian spy movie. Seems more realistic than Bond or Bourne - the spies aren't good-looking. Has a cosy East-European feel (a butcher offers to pack someone sausages for the way as a hospitality gesture).

9TO5 - DAYS IN PORN
Watchable. A well-made documentary about porn industry. Presenter's: "no one has it, no one buys it, no one watches it but they make more money than the movie industry" sums it up well. Who is pervert: those who fuck 8 hours a day making $ 1000-2000 daily or those who fuel the demand for such jobs at all?

ACOLYTES
Watchable. An Australian thriller that promises more than it delivers.

THE BIRTHDAY
Walked out. The movie aspires to mimick Lynch but results in heaps of rubbish. The lead actor (Corey Feldman) has an annoying asthmatic voice.

THE BLUE TOWER
Walked out. A British movie about the Indian community aspiring to become second "Brick Lane" - not that that film was much better.

THE END
Watchable. A documentary about London's East End gangsters. Interesting to see how the area evolved over the years and became less and less English and more and more Bangladeshi/Indian/Pakistani. Other than that the story about the director's father and his accomplices is too personal for outsiders.

FINE, TOTALLY FINE
Recommended. A Japanese comedy about a very accident-prone girl and other misfits. Rarely do you laugh so much at the cinema.

FUGITIVE PIECES
Watchable. A poetic Canadian reflection on emigration, national identity and relationships. Very thought-provoking, to the point where, somehow parallel to the movie, it led me to reflect on one considerable difference between life in my native Poland and my adopted Britain:

In Poland we normally cook and often grow our own food while in Britain hardly anyone bothers even cooking. The British must feel really secure on their island. The second world war didn't affect them much, they don't have existential concerns, they are oriented at their own comfort and convenience. In Poland growing fruit and veg on your own allotment is kind of a national obsession. I think it's subconsious. This is how you survive the war. This is how my parents came into being. My father's first five years of life were during the war, in a small village. Soldiers didn't bother them much. They would come round and ask for milk or eggs which the villagers would give freely to Poles and to Germans all the same. Only Ukrainians were seen as menace - you had to run and hide in the woods. When my grandma got pregnant with my mum she left Warsaw. It was safer to carry the baby and give birth in the country. Also, when you grow your own food, you are independent of the market and you don't get affected by famine in case of war or a crisis. Growing and cooking your own food as well as reparing stuff is a matter of staying physically and mentally fit in times of peace and a matter of survival during a war.
It also led me to a generalisation on cultural differences in the mostly-white parts of the world - in America people look to the future (oriented at achieving success), in Western Europe people live at present (oriented at having fun right now) while in Eastern Europe people constantly refer to the past (burden of history).

More festival and general release movies later this week.