MIFF Blogathon: Day 2 (Forgotten Caves, Kill Lists and Submarines)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Dir. Werner Herzog
Running Time: 90mins

Has Werner Herzog become a quasi-hipster joke? A piss-take of himself that nobody can take seriously? It certainly feels that way after watching this 3D documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, as he drearily walks around a cave spouting ridiculous dialogue like "is this cave the beginning of the modern soul?" in that recognisable accent of his. Perhaps Herzog thinks that by this stage of his career he can do whatever he likes and that if he just throws out some verbose narration and obvious references to Baywatch that people will love it?

Whatever the case my be, the subject matter - previously undiscovered, ancient rock drawings from France - feels like an important topic in a historic sense, but nothing Herzog does here, other than the occasionally spectacular 3D, can enliven the rather drowsy material. I admit to falling into several microsleeps during this film, which feels like a short documentary expanded into feature length to the detriment of the material. An abrasive musical score by Ernst Reijseger certainly doesn't help matters, either. A disappointing effort. C

Living on Love Alone
Dir. Isabelle Czajka
Running Time: 89mins

A lovingly lit French drama about a young woman, Anaïs Demoustier as Julie, whose inability to cope with the realities of inner city life sends her crashing towards a doomed romance with an out of work actor, Pio Marmaï as Ben. Living on Love Alone [D'amour et d'eau fraîche] is the debut feature for Isabelle Czajka and while it certainly looks impressive, thanks to sun-kissed cinematography by Crystel Fournier and the attractive leads, it suffers from the dreaded no-third-act syndrome. This is a phenomenon that plagues many Australian films, too, and it's disappointing that this brief film wasn't expanded somewhat and given a proper ending.

Demoustier is a stylish presence on screen, but it's Marmaï who really stands out as the film's strongest aspect. His charming presence makes Julie's decisions more believable than they otherwise would be. The screenplay, also by Czajka, has some interesting things to say about the laziness of youth and Julie's inability to comprehend what is required of her in the adult world. I appreciated Czajka's realistic take on young people and their attitudes towards sex, while a family dinner sequence is spot on, too, in the way family members interact. The closing scenes are involving, but end too abruptly. B-

I just want to show you what Pio Marmaï looks like, okay?


I think I'm in love lust.

Submarine
Dir. Richard Ayoade
Running Time: 97mins

"Ben Stiller Presents" says the poster. I presume because British humour does not travel well over the Atlantic Ocean (the Australian poster is Ben Still free) they felt the need to place Stiller's marketable name on there, but I can't imagine anybody going to see Richard Ayoade's debut feature Submarine based on his name and being anything but disappointed. That's not a mark against the film, but it was something that lingered on my mind after the credits. There is such a distinct voice to Submarine that dumbing it down to Ben Stiller's level feels silly.

At first coming off as Britain's answer to a Wes Anderson film, Submarine eventually morphs into something far darker and less pleasurable. Aided by a winning lead performance by Craig Roberts, the opening half of Richard Ayoade's debut feature is funny and charming, with brisk editing Chris Dickens and Nick Fenton and a wonderfully worked sense of time and place. However, the way Ayoade handled the shift in tone is troublesome. There's no nuance there and the abrupt change is distracting. Still, there are many pleasures to be found withing Submarine and I suspect it was garner a lot of fans with its refreshing take on American quirky indies. B

Kill List
Dir. Ben Wheatley
Running Time: 90mins

A film of three very different acts - domestic drama; action movie; horror - Ben Wheatley's Kill List is a rather confounding experience. The less you know about it the more intrigued you will be by it. I was curious as to where it was going, especially in those opening scenes where domestic non-bliss, although once it got there I found my interest waning. A third act about face, however, produces some truly visceral, terrifying cinema. Kill List is a curious film and probably demands more thought than I am able to give it right now. B-

The Innkeepers
Dir. Ti West
Running Time: 102mins

Ti West has, after two films, become one of the most interesting names in horror. Not content to make the same film like many others, West has followed up his terrifying 1980s homage The House of the Devil with this far more quaint and quieter scarer. Made with a very obvious wink at the audience, The Innkeepers succeeds due to the adorable charm of lead Sara Paxton and a gripping set of frights that work time and time again.

It still saddens me to know that The House of the Devil never got a release in country. I was able to see it a local horror film festival, but no subsequent DVD release has ever eventuated. Such a shame that people haven't been able to see it without illegal downloading because it's a doozy of a horror flick. West appears to have learnt a thing or two as well since there are no pacing issues and the third act is a considerable step in the right direction. I can only hope that local audiences get the chance to see The Innkeepers at some point as it works far better than many horror films that get a release. It's got a kindred spirit in Insidious, and I think if you mixed the two films together they would actually make a perfect horror movie. As it stands? B+

MIFF TALES:
I somehow made it through five films yesterday despite battling the flu. I have popped so many pills and drank so many blackcurrent lemsips and yet it still hangs around. If you notice my writing in these entries tends to drift off or sound disconnected, it's probably because I don't feel like myself right now. This is getting very tiresome.

Not as tiresome, however, as the technical issues a near sold out crowd experienced at Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Not just one, but several! At first the film began to play with distorted sound. As @FeNi64 humourously put it on Twitter: "It sounded like Stephen Hawking on flat batteries." That this is an apt description is all very o_O you know? Still, the pandemonium that erupted through the Hoyts cinema was like nothing I had ever witness before. Patrons, a lot of them, were stomping their feet, booing, chanting... anything to get the attention of the festival staff so they would do something. I heard later in the evening from someone who was standing next to festival director Michelle Carey when she got the phone call and she was none too pleased.


Once they finally got the film going from the start again the crowd couldn't have expected what would come next: During the "postscript" sequence (the bit about albino crocodiles) the film just stopped. Another wave of moans and groans swept across the cinema as one employee valiantly tried to keep us all in check. Several people got up to leave. I didn't. However, once the film started up again and then froze AGAIN? I grabbed my stuff and left. Such is the burden of a person seeing 60 films at a festival.

Review: The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call Orleans
Dir. Werner Herzog
Year: 2009
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 122mins

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a movie isn’t close to being as fun, funny or insane as it thinks it is. Considering the original Bad Lieutenant by Abel Ferrara was released 18 years ago, it’s hard to see how Werner Herzog’s version is as shocking as it thinks it is either. Harvey Keitel’s lieutenant was doing drugs, masturbating in front of young women and abusing suspects around the same time Nicolas Cage was giving his patented crazy style of acting in much better movies such as David Lynch’s Wild at Heart. So what then, dear reader, was the point of this movie?

It’s hard to say. None of the actors are able to emerge out of the shadow that Herzog creates for Cage. Eva Mendes has nothing to do but stand around and look sultry, which is a hard thing to do given Peter Zeitlinger’s cinematography is so dank and confining – while the likes of Val Kilmer and Faizura Balk just stand around with nothing to do. Jennifer Coolidge is perhaps the only actor who’s able to shine since she has the innate ability to be even more deranged than Cage and Herzog put together. The brief moments where Herzog really goes off his medication, mostly moments involving alligators and iguanas, are amusing in a broad sort of way, but feel more like token oddities rather than anything truly organic.


The actual plot of The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans revolves around the trailer park shooting of a family of Senegalese refugees in the months after Hurricane Katrina. Herzog can be commended for his representation of New Orleans, he doesn’t sugarcoat this town’s misfortunes and there isn’t a pretty sight in the entire movie. As a murder mystery, however, it doesn’t even rise above the level of intrigue supplied by season 15 of Law & Order. Nor does it excite from a filmmaking point of view. None of the twists or developments feel exciting from a storytelling point of view, nor are they shown in any compelling form. Things happen and that’s about it.

Which brings me back to the lead character of Lieutenant Terence McDonagh as played by Cage. His foul behaviour is supposed to be the hook of this film, but it instead feels forced and even juvenile. I’m sure it was shocking to see Harvey Keitel strut around naked while snorting bags of cocaine whilst solving the crime of a nun being raped in the 1992 original, but in 2010 watching Nicolas Cage dive off the deep end is about as revolutionary as, well, Harvey Keitel nuding up.

And what of Nicolas Cage? A man whose tics and twitches have seemingly taken over his career and his mumbly vocals inserted itself into every performance. There isn’t anything about this performance here that we haven’t seen. Am I meant to find it better simply because he’s being directed by a man just as bonkers as he? Cage’s style perfectly fit the aforementioned Wild at Heart 20 years ago and at least that picture was stylistically on the same wavelength. And then there’s the issue of Cage’s accent, which strangely changes midway through the movie into some weird combination of Jimmy Stewart and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.


Ferrara’s original wasn’t even that good in the first place and even though there is no connection other than the bare strings of plot that they share, Herzog’s movie feels dated and warn out. As a movie made solely to frame Herzog and Cage’s duel wackiness around a story of ever-increasing moments of “shocking” depravity it lacks anything that can truly be described as shocking in this day and age as it plods along at a snail’s pace. Both of these men have done incredible work before, similar to that on display here, but The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a perfect example of two people being so perfect for one another that they end up cancelling each other out. Two pretty people equalling an ugly baby if you’d like a metaphor. It could be humourous if it wasn’t so ugly and putrid, both to look at and from an entertainment level. All that’s left in the end that’s truly new is a scene involving iguanas and that just isn’t enough. D

The Best (and Worst) Posters of 2009

We here are Stale Popcorn (ie Me) loooove movie posters. They can be gorgeous, hideous, hilarious, frightening or arousing and I always find something to point out. As 2009 has now drawn to a closer it is time to look back of the past year of film artwork and single out those that rung my bell so the speak. Very soon there will be a look over the entire decade - I already know what's #1 so that exciting part of list making is a dead end - but for now we are focusing on the year that was 2009. A year when, thankfully, big empty white space just wasn't as prominent as usual - it is something that I am predictable to a fault over - but with less of that came more of those annoying stripey posters and more "film still surrounded by nothing" designs. These people really need some new defaults.

I'm not doing a worst list again because after that first year I realised there are just far too many bad ones, but I hope you enjoy the extra fun categories towards the end. To catch up on previous years you can click here and here. Let's proceed, shall we?


(click on all images to enlarge)
(all images courtesy of IMP and MPDb)

10. Broken Embraces

Sure, this idea has been done before, but when you have Pedro Almodovar directing Penelope Cruz in a film noir I think an exception can be made. The colours scream "ALMODOVAR!" don't they?

9. Taxidermia

I saw this film years ago, but it only came out in America in 2009 and with it came this wonderful design. Anyone who has seen Palfi's film will know that you need a stomach made of stone just to sit through it, and the idea of making art out of something disgusting is all on show on this poster. "A twisted slice of life" indeed!

8. Julie & Julia

This poster makes me sing "Lean on me / When you're not strong" and so on. As delicately done as the eggs on the poster, this poster is just on the right side of cutesy twee and I actually like that "Based on two true stories" tagline. So much so that I can forgive that "adult woman's romantic comedy font".

7. Thirst

Because you can't say it doesn't... grab your attention. And then thrust it in your face!

6. The Brothers Bloom

Almost too overwhelmed by its own design, this poster thankfully has a purpose to its intricate artsy drawing motif instead of just wanting to appear hip. And I like that it continues its idea into the border and the credits, which some key art designers seem to just forget about.

5. Moon

Hypnotic, isn't it?

4. A Christmas Carol

I'm not sure if they used this design at all in English-speaking countries - I only ever saw that annoying one with Jim Carrey flying - but I think this German design (it is German isn't it?) is by far better and does a great job at selling the movie as the darker film it (apparently) is. If this were a horror movie I'd think it was even better since I actually get a bit of a chill from it, don't you?

3. Precious: Based on the Novel PUSH by Sapphire

Definitely the film with the most excellent posters (there is also this, this and not least of all this), but it was this (literally) shattering design that floored me the most. And for a movie poster to so bluntly push the film's sexual abuse angle is quite shocking.

2. The Girlfriend Experience

And I still don't even know what it's meant to "be". What is it that makes this poster for Steven Soderbergh's low-budget movie starring a porn star so... alluring? It's certainly not Sasha Grey, that's for sure. Is it the polka dots? It's gotta be the polka dots! Right? Unless I'm forgetting something, this definitely has the best tagline of the year: "See it with someone you ****". Amazing.

1. Antichrist

And not just because I actually sorta helped make it famous, but because it’s just so brilliant in idea and so artfully executed. If you even have the slightest idea of the film's big... er, moment, then you know why the idea of the scissors clamping shut in order to the heads to kiss is a leg-crossing, but altogether ballsy, idea to portray on a movie poster.

And let me tell ya, there's nothing quite like seeing a whole row of this design plastered over a wall on Spencer Street here in Melbourne! I had to take a photo. Yes, those are my fingers. I was taking the photo from inside a tram.


Notice how the second from the left has been torn down by someone as a keepsake?

Best Rip-Off:
Black Dynamite

Blaxpoitation at its finest.

Dreamiest Use of Colour:
Bright Star (Aus)

I saw this hanging up at a cinema the other day nearly 4 metres high and, gosh, it really is dreamy.

Best Saul Bass Impersonation:
Three Blind Mice

Although there is another poster out there floating about on which I am quoted!

Best Poster Series:
The Hangover

And all the others too! Runner-Up being District 9.

Best Upgrade

For turning those boring posters into one that actually makes sense in the form of this Asian design that apes off of Sgt Pepper.

Best Use of Indie Money:
Breaking Upwards

Sometimes working on a budget of two cents can product better looking work than millions.

Worst Rip-Off:
Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself

Because ripping off one of the best posters of all time for a Madea movie just seems so bizarre. Runner-ups include Everybody Wants to be Italian, My Life in Ruins and Fame (it's as if Coca-Cola and Apple made a musical about overly enthusiastic American Idol contestants.

Worst Trend:
Notepads and drawings (According to Greta, Stay Cool, Away We Go, I Love You Beth Cooper, etc)


Because nothing says annoying quite like this! It was fun a few years ago, but not anymore.

Unscariest Poster for a "Scary Movie":
The Haunting in Connecticut

I don't even wanna know.

Worst Photoshopping:
{tie}
Nine and My One and Only

Considering the latter got a barely there release and I don't even think many people know of its existence I can almost accept the bad photoshopping, but there's no excuse for Nine. None at all. Previously written about here and here.

The "My, What a Big Floating Head You Have" Award for Excellence in Big Floating Heads:
Natalie Imbruglia in Closed for Winter

She released the best album of 2009, but also one of the worst movies. The poster was no better.

Worst "Empty Space" Poster:
Did You Hear About the Morgans?

What makes this movie even worse is that, having now seen it, the event portrayed in the poster doesn't even happen in the movie. Gah!

Funniest "WTF?" Moment

For real? No, seriously, ARE THEY FOR REAL?!? It's just so... wtf?

Worst False Advertising:
{tie}
H2, For not actually being a direct-to-DVD movie despite what the poster implies, and;
Obsessed, for giving the impression that this movie isn't just an excuse to watch Beyonce whoop some white girl ass (and that her father was a producer, natch!)


Most Unappealing Poster:
Crank 2: High Voltage

Ya know, normally I'd think the idea of Jason Statham appearing anywhere (especially a movie poster) without a shirt would be a pleasant thing, but not here. Grotesque, ugly and repulsive. Blegh!

The "This Deserves Better" Award
Nine, The Road, A Single Man and Me & Orson Welles


I haven't seen any of these movies, but I can't imagine them being any worse than their posters. That three of them a Weinstein Company releases is quite telling.

THE WORST POSTER OF 2009:
The Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience

To think I wrote this blog piece on 9 January and it has held up all year long as the worst piece of drivel advertising I have seen all year. I like that the winning answer of the poll I ran at the time was "They're worse than herpes". Just dreadful in every imaginable way.

The Second Annual Showgirls Honourary Award for Brilliance in the Face of Ineptitude in Poster Design:
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Why oh why was the poster in which Nicolas Cage waves a gun in the face of two old ladies (and an iguana) banned? Sure, it shows threatening violence and that's a big no no, but is it really any more offensive than the Jonas Brothers using their guitars as representation of their penis? I think not! Meanwhile look at the gun on that second poster! Yowza! I think he's happy to see me.