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This is a strange film. It changes mood, pace and genre several times, beginning as a straightforward drama then veering into romance then horror then fantasy then fairytale, with the occasional musical number thrown in. Continue reading
Image via miff.com.au
This masterful and emotionally-engaging documentary begins as a journey through the key places and moments in the life of Elvis Presley, from Tupelo to Memphis, Nashville, New York and finally Las Vegas. Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki drives around in Elvis’s Rolls-Royce and passengers join him, some telling stories of being Elvis’s friend, neighbour or fellow churchgoer, some famous faces talking about celebrity and politics, others just playing a tune. Continue reading
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I tried to keep my expectations low for this quiet and cinematic meditation on masculinity and rodeo riders. I only booked it because of recommendations from fellow MIFF tweeters and it’s often a mistake to expect too much (First Reformed (2017) is a good example of this). It took a little while to settle into the pace and the slight awkwardness of non-professional actors but once I did, I was hopelessly lost in its beauty and pathos. Continue reading
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Pretty much all I knew about Matangi a.k.a. Maya Arulpragasm a.k.a. M.I.A. is the song Bad Girls. The anthem to girls doing whatever they want has a killer video clip of stunt drivers in the Middle East and M.I.A. resplendent in shades and gold chains. I now know there is so much more to her than this song and her Grammy and Oscar nominations. Continue reading
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Based on the real problem of children left vulnerable when their parents are captured or killed by Mexican drug cartels, Issa López’s horror take is cast primarily with child actors who do a decent job of carrying the story. Integrating fable-like elements and some competent special effects, the result is engaging although somewhat marred by sentimentality. Continue reading
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This short South Korean virtual reality film mixes static and moving imagery to evoke words sent from a man to a woman as he revisit the places they went to together. Like a poem, we sense the emptiness of the spaces without her, the monochrome of lost punctuated by the saturated colour of memory. Continue reading
An interesting journey through sites of industry – metal crushers, freight ships, oil wells – with people who work there speaking of their relationships with sound and silence. Marred by the noise coming from the venue foyer, it was nevertheless an interesting experience but not as visually pleasing as the above image.
