KAWASAKI'S ROSE (Jan Hrebejk, 2009)

**
Czech Republic

All of Hrebejk's films are didactic but usually lively and complex enough to compensate. This one is complicated rather than complex. And it has no life.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Woody Allen, 2011)

***½
USA

Hardcore Woody Allen acolytes have had a decade to learn to look past the often cheap gags, the increasingly unimaginative plotting, thin (if lively and well-acted) caricatures and over-conceived under-developed scenarios purely to bask in images and cadences that bring memories of Annie Hall and The Purple Rose of Cairo. For me at least, watching each year's fresh-yet-familiar Woody Allen frivolity is precisely and entirely about tripping on nostalgia, entering a warm, somehow cynically idealised smartalecky heart-gradually-emerging-on-the-sleeve world.

In this sense, I even thoroughly enjoyed things like Anything Else and Whatever Works. But in this sense, I've generally been in the very un-hip minority for well over a decade.

By the time I was allowed into a cinema without my parents, Allen's glory days were well and truly over and he was churning out things like Small Time Crooks (which made me laugh - I realise I'm supposed to be embarrassed about this). So to find myself queueing round the block for Allen's latest and leaving the cinema along with a beaming crowd - it's an unreal experience, and I don't know how to explain it.

This isn't some sort of return to form. It's a tender, charming, occasionally a little irritating (Woody, I love you, but name dropping is not a punchline) but perfectly satisfying concoction with a fabulous Woody surrogate and an overarching idea that is touching, thought-provoking and neither deeply nor subtly dissected.

That this particular offering has managed to strike a $50m+ chord with audiences and bring Allen out of 15 barely interrupted years of oblivion makes no sense to me whatsoever. And yet, for no rational reason, it makes me very happy.

WEST SIDE STORY (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, 1961)

**½
USA

Musical theatre and gang warfare. It's an uneasy mix. For the Sharks and the Jets, fists and guns just won't do. They settle their scores the only real way: through dance.

Yes, it's an easy target today, but once upon a time this mix of self-conscious cool and sledgehammer topicality won accolades and Academy Awards.

Admittedly the better numbers - America, the gym dance, bits of Cool - have lost none of their electric charge. In order to get to them, it's almost worth furrowing through all the posturing, the caricatures, the soggy vacant leads, the James-Cameron-hits-da-streets dialogue, the endless moralising and general endlessness (two and a half hours!).

UN COEUR EN HIVER (Claude Sautet, 1992)

**½
France

Emmannuelle Béart plays a dour, meticulous, paradisiacally beautiful violinist. André Dussolier is her astonishingly patient lover. Daniel Auteuil is his best friend, and the man Emmannuelle truly loves. And he is drawn to her too, so much so that his friend will politely look the other way when she decides to throw herself at him, not realising that - hélas! - Auteuil is a Man Incapable of Love.

Yes, it's that kind of French movie. They all get together in tastefully lit venues with not a poor person in sight, communicate in strictly ponderous dialogue, smile only in order to express ungraspable pain. You want to go up to each person individually and give them a good shake.

The leads are casually arresting and Sautet utilises Ravel to sneakily hypnotic effect. But this is shallow stuff.

CASABLANCA (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

*****
USA

A masterclass in atmosphere, dialogue and character colour. In popular culture and most people's memories this famously flukey classic of Warner Bros. backlot intrigue chiefly endures for its breathless love story. You remember vague talk of 'rounding up the usual suspects' and 'shock - shock! that gambling goes on in this casino'. But generally when someone says 'Casablanca' the first images that come to mind are Bogart anaesthetising a broken heart with only a searchlight for company and Bergman melting into his arms to the tune of "As Time Goes By".

So it's always a wonderful surprise to rediscover the film’s self-conscious but thoroughly beguiling aura of 'wordliness', not to mention its disarming balance of blunt cynicism and clear-eyed idealism. Yes, it's fundamentally a romance with blinding star wattage but it has brain too. The ratio of soft-focus swooning to delicious cleverness is not quite as you remember.

In any case you still have to catch your breath when a downtrodden crowd thunders the Marseillaise, when Rick delivers his farewell speech at the airport and every time the camera frames Ingrid Bergman in close-up.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956)

**½
USA

"Oh, Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool!" This exclamation (by a blitzed Anne Baxter) sums up not only Charlton Heston, his NRA self-righteousness and Zapp Brannigan cadences, but also the visionary mind behind this ultra-kitschy nearly-four-hour pomposity. It's probably the most hilarious of all biblical epics - and that's saying something.

JANE EYRE (Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2011)

**½
USA

For some reason it's never been more acceptable to poke fun at the very Hollywoodised and rather fabulous 1944 Fontaine-Welles version and its arch theatrics. But Brontë's gothic romance needs theatrics - it needs to be moody, tempestuous, pompous, passionate to an excess. Because when you tackle a plot this foggy with dialogue this mannered, you need to accept that you are dealing in fantasy.

In theory this 'gen-Y' update's handheld camerawork and murky, strictly motivated lighting are irreproachable. In theory so is the attempt at age-appropriate casting and semi-naturalistic acting. But for all their repressed hysterics and clipped line readings, Wasikowska and Fassbender don't muster up a trace of chemistry or any coherent emotional throughline.

The 1944 version was shrill and faintly tacky, but it had force, it had conviction, it was transporting. This 2011 edition is by comparison wan, unconvincing. Bloodless.

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (Don Siegel, 1956)

****
USA

One of those classics I feel warmly towards but can't fully get behind.

As much as I appreciate a tight, economical set-up, the plot turns and revelations here pile up without concern for even B-grade-sci-fi-level coherence. And the script gives Kevin McCarthy far too much dialogue. The best sequences have none. Or they feel like they have none.

Santa Mira is the film's great asset. It's actually more vivid and palatable than any other Hollywood 50s small-town recreation.

PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (Francis Ford Coppola, 1986)

**½
USA

Back to the Future for disillusioned 80s housewives. Never mind the usual qualms about time travel movies* - just as basic storytelling, this one is weirdly erratic and disjointed. Key scenes seem to be missing and various emotionally charged conversations have no impact on the relationships involved since the characters seem to have forgotten them when they pop up five minutes later.

Several people in the cast are under the unfortunate impression that they have the lead role, while Kathleen Turner hacks away at her big closeups with all the gusto of Charles Busch in Susan Hayward mode.

Like a lot of sunny 80s tackfests, this one is fun to revisit in a half-nostalgic, half-ironic way. But if I was watching it 1986, I'd be pretty confident it's a piece of shit.



* e.g. why would you keep talking about people standing in front of you in the past tense and why won't anybody pick you up on it? why wouldn't you run to the police and warn them to take special care with the president in Dallas in November 1962? why do people in the 60s have hairstyles from the 80s? what are all these 36 year olds doing in a classroom? what made Peggy Sue's whitebread all-American parents adopt an awkward, expressionless girl from southern Italy? how could those sketchy, unhinged actorly tics evolve into something that could net Nicolas Cage an Oscar? The mind boggles.

Melbourne International Film Festival: THE TOP 10

What a fabulous year this was for Cannes. But also for MIFF!

1. BEGINNERS
   dir: Mike Mills
   
2. MELANCHOLIA
   dir: Lars von Trier
   
3. TUESDAY, AFTER CHRISTMAS
   dir: Radu Muntean
   
4. A SEPARATION
   dir: Asghar Farhadi
   
5. ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA
   dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
   
6. POLISSE
   dir: Maïwenn
   
7. TERRI
   dir: Azazel Jacobs
   
8. THE FUTURE
   dir: Miranda July
   
9. THE KID WITH A BIKE
   dir: Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardenne
   
10. TABLOID
    dir: Errol Morris
    

With very honourable mentions going out to Elena, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Michael, Take Shelter and The Turin Horse.

Best Actress:
KIRSTEN DUNST (Melancholia)
runner-ups: Mirela Oprisor (Tuesday, After Christmas), Leila Hatami (A Separation), Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene)

Best Actor:
MUHAMMET UZUNER (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia)
runner-ups: Dragos Bucur (Tuesday, After Christmas), Michael Shannon (Take Shelter), Thomas Doret (The Kid with a Bike)

Best Supporting Actress:
MARY PAGE KELLER (Beginners)
runner-ups: Yelena Lyadova (Elena), Maria Popistasu (Tuesday, After Christmas), Karin Viard (Polisse)

Best Supporting Actor:
TANER BIRSEL (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia)
runner-ups: John C. Reilly (Terri), Yilmaz Erdogan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), Shahab Hosseini (A Separation)

Best Screenplay:
MIKE MILLS (Beginners)
[impeccable] runner-ups: Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Once Upon a Time in Anatolia), Lars von Trier (Melancholia), Radu Muntean (Tuesday, After Christmas), Asghar Farhadi (A Separation)

Best Cinematography:
MANUEL ALBERTO CLARO (Melancholia)
runner-ups: Fred Kelemen (The Turin Horse), Alain Marcoen (The Kid with a Bike), Mikhail Krichman (Elena)

Best Ensemble:
TUESDAY, AFTER CHRISTMAS
[astounding] runner-ups: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, Polisse, Melancholia, A Separation

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011)

****
Turkey/Bosnia-Herzegovina

When a film opens with a police car's headlights scouring a barren, isolated hillside, you expect a certain kind of story. Nuri Bilge Ceylan is resolutely uninterested in that story, or the rhythm that tends to accompany it. Particularly in the context of this opening setup, his own narrative rhythm takes more than a little adjusting, but when you 'get' it, it's something of a revelation.

Ceylan isn't interested in epic events so much as the intricate lives, histories, pesonal demons and perspectives that inform, bring meaning and tension to even the most mundane moment. It's rare for an artist today to be so centrally concerned with the human condition, and it's even rarer to be able to dissect said condition with Chekhovian skill and insight.

BEAUTY (Oliver Hermanus, 2011)

***½
South Africa

A middle-aged, self-hating, deeply closeted and (duh) fairly unbalanced family man falls obsessively in love with his daughter's tanned, toned, always smiling suitor.

The closet in small town South Africa turns out to be even more constricting and traumatising than in other places. Hermanus has a self-conscious style that proves somehat limiting, but all the same, this is compelling stuff.

ATTENBERG (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2010)

***
Greece

A 12-year-old trapped in a 22-year-old virgin's body is confronted with a 42-year-old's problems, namely her father's terminal cancer and funeral arrangments.

A very awkward love interest is played by Giorgos Lanthimos, whose brilliant Dogtooth was co-produced by Tsangari. In what is her second stab at directing she aims for a vaguely similar slanted-world approach. But the tone of her film seems to shift from sequence to sequence.

All the same, there is a lot of warmth here, much of it stemming from the open-faced, committed Ariane Labed in the lead.

CEDAR RAPIDS (Miguel Arteta, 2011)

***
USA

Likable enough but you can sense the script screeching to make each proscribed character turn.

A USEFUL LIFE (Federico Veiroj, 2010)

*½
Uruguay

The first half is dry and academic, then there is a tonal shift towards something closer to tender and tedious.

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (Werner Herzog, 2010)

***½
Canada/USA/France

Like every recent Herzog venture, a scuffle between ponderous and transcendent trains of thought. Thankfully the latter dominate.

He tackles the Chauvet cave paintings as a tantalising but forever obstructed pathway into not just another time but another universe. For as long as he doesn't get bogged down in inane pseudo-metaphysics,* it's a transporting, almost profound experience.


* e.g. "Is this our heartbeat we hear? Or theirs?" Uh, neither, Herr Herzog, it's a stock sound effect you tacked on in post.

THE HOLLYWOOD COMPLEX (Dylan Nelson, Dan Sturman, 2011)

***½
USA

A chirpy, frightening, transfixing-like-a-car-crash look at a set of aspiring child stars and the parents that camp with them at the specialty Oakwood apartments in Hollywood during pilot week.

ELENA (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2011)

****
Russia

There is a father-daughter hospital-bedside scene here that is blunt, witty, fiercely unsentimental yet deeply moving. It is a masterclass in acting and dialogue.

The film is otherwise a pretty straightforward [im]morality tale - schematic but convincing, compelling and elegantly mounted.

NEDS (Peter Mullan, 2010)

**
UK

Murky weather, bad haircuts, youth gangs, father-son hysterics - British kitchen sink miserablism lives on.

Mullan has nothing much to contribute. Unless you consider scoring violence with cheesy pop radical. Which it hasn't been since at least the 70s.

ESSENTIAL KILLING (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2010)

**
Poland

Some people will see a Taliban fighter, some people will see Vincent Gallo with a longer than usual beard. Otherwise this is a pretty routine man-on-the-run-from-men-with-guns-in-the-wilderness tale, more concerned with devising increasingly grotesque ways for Gallo to feed himself than with any kind of political statement.

SILENT SOULS (Aleksei Fedorchenko, 2010)

***
Russia

A soul-searching Russian descended from an obscure Finno-Ugric tribe hits the road with his friend to bury the latter's recently departed wife in a distant lake according to ancient folk rituals.

Though the plot has a clearly defined throughline, there are so many eccentric asides and strange detours along the way that the film almost works better as a series of textured, contemplative vignettes. The various strands do ultimately cohere quite eloquently and resonantly. Though the insistent woman-is-an-exotic-body-of-water metaphors don't really belong in this century.

CLIENT 9: THE RISE AND FALL OF ELIOT SPITZER (Alex Gibney, 2010)

***
USA

Gibney charts a fascinating, intricate tale, if not elegantly, then at least in compelling detail. He gives Spitzer a few too many chances to compare himself to a behemoth of mythological proportions. But he also ensures that several absurd but evidently-not-made-up characters - including a bubbly 22-year-old madame, a singularly sleazy political strategist, an ever so slightly unhinged investment banker - say things that are revealing on multiple (and not always intentional) levels.

THE DAY HE ARRIVES (Hong Sang-soo, 2011)

***
South Korea

It's uncanny, but in his twelfth version of the same film - insecure filmmakers, beautiful women who sleep with them anyway, lots of drinking - Hong yet again manages to wring out a new and unexpectedly resonant inflection.

However, even within a 79-minute runtime, he manages to meander unnecessarily - particularly in the closing scenes, after all his points are well and truly made and the various conundrums eloquently resolved.

It's always possible that his thirteenth film might uncover yet another arresting nuance on this same plot. But it definitely feels like his comfort zone will very soon grow constricting.

Unless his next film stars Isabelle Huppert. That would be profoundly exciting.

THE TURIN HORSE (Bela Tarr, 2011)

***½
Hungary

The titular horse (which reportedly drove Nietzsche mad) only pops up occasionally, to brood and act deflated. I think the implication is that it knows something. I think the horse is playing Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia.

This is the Bela Tarr Experience cranked up to eleven. The horse's craggy owner and his equally craggy daughter are the protagonists. A force five gale has them trapped in their isolated hut amidst a barren plain. The majority of the action is taken up with six days worth of their ascetic, mind-numbing day-to-day routine: dressing the old man, drawing water from the well, sitting down to a meal of boiled potatoes, staring out the window, downing some home-made spirits, some more potatoes, then some more staring out the window.

Tarr is a pretentious filmmaker, for sure, and indulgent, and morbidly depressed. But also a little bit brilliant. He draws you into his gloomy worlds through a peerless sense for light, composition and movement and a relentless series of stark, entrancing images:

Within a single take, through a slight camera move, he can render a poky hut cavernous. When the horseman's daughter sets the potatoes to boil and takes her seat by the window, the leaves on the tattered plain flutter up at just the right moment and it's poetry. In a later section, from the other side of the window, we come across her staring out once again, this time looking ghostly and beaten. What should be a mundane, familiar sighting is instead eerie and devastating.

In a sense this feeling sums up the film itself: scenes that should be rote and ludicrous inexplicably coming off as poetic and transfixing.

AT ELLEN'S AGE (Pia Marais, 2010)

**½
Germany

Jeanne Balibar plays a stewardess who discovers her lover has impregnated another woman, ditches him, breaks down mid-air safety instructions, then follows her inscrutable impulses, drifting from one faintly surreal situation to another. A dark, knowing antidote to the Eat Pray Love industry, Marais' film coasts by for a while on Balibar's natural magnetism and a nicely judged, nervy aesthetic. But eventually the heroine's misadventures start to feel arbitrary and interchangeable.

WINTER VACATION (Li Hongqi, 2010)

*1/2
China

Deadpan absurdism of the Andersson-Suleiman variety pushed to a mordant, oppressive limit. It seems to be intended as some sort of satire of small-town ennui in Northern China. But you get the point pretty early on, and the joke - which consists of suppressing face expressions and stretching out the nonsensical dialogues endlessly - wears out quickly.

CIRCUMSTANCE (Maryam Keshavarz, 2011)

***
France/USA/Iran

Two pillow-lipped Persian variations on Natalie Portman play out a love story against the backdrop of Tehran's privileged classes and undergruond clubs. Underground clubs in this context doesn't refer to a chic-squalid place where you are encouraged to wear the clothes your mother kept from the 80s - rather, a place where "sewing class" is the code word and the headscarf-shedding, hip-thrusting youth goes to snort, dance and hide from the morality police.

Does a difficult shoot and honourable intentions render a contrived romance into something worthwhile? Partially, yes. The glimpses into the above-mentioned underground clubs and things like video stores tucked in behind barbershop fronts make the story - which ultimately amounts to a nonsensical soap opera - much more absorbing than it should be.

PLAY (Ruben Östlund, 2011)

*½
Sweden

An insufferably smug exercise in sub-Haneke sadism. Three meek children get tortured for two hours not because the narrative demands it but purely to serve Östlund's facile didactics.

HOW TO DIE IN OREGON (Peter Richardson, 2011)

**½
USA

Who would pay money to check out a moody, wrenching feature-length doc about Oregon's euthanasia laws? The kind of people for whom euthanasia is a resolutely black-and-white issue.

Richardson is very much content to preach to the converted. Only one of his subjects manages to complicate his thesis when he points out what insurance companies are able to perpetrate with the wrong kind of euthanasia law. But Richardson abandons this interviewee within seconds and spends the rest of the time prying out your tears over some deeply sympathetic people's efforts of to die with dignity.

POLISSE (Maïwenn, 2011)

****
France

A scrappy, immersive slice of French police life that crams in enough scenarios for a mini-series worth of special victims unit procedurals. It's a little crude, and hampered by a weirdly misjudged finale, but it's consistently enthralling. With a peerless ensemble of French veterans at her disposal, despite the busy interplotting, Maïwenn manages to bring off more than a dozen convincing and remarkably vivid characterisations. Through hectic snippets she renders the personal lives of this motley but very relatable crew just as compelling as their professional ones.