Matryoshka doll redux

So here's the thing,

As happens each year, the upcoming arrival of this year's film festival has finally prompted me to post my responses to the films I saw at last year's festival. As always, these were my initial responses, many of them written very quickly on my phone while waiting for my next screening, and all of them written within a day or two of seeing the film. So these are very rough and immediate reflections that I have left essentially as they were.

Triumph of suspense, laughter, violence, hope, heart, nudity, sex, happy endings... mainly happy endings

So here’s the thing,

Film festival tickets went on sale today and, as in the past two years, I decided to not stand in the cold for four hours waiting, instead trying to book my tickets online. After last year’s mess, I made the decision to book tickets ten at a time, in the hope that a ten-film order might be faster and easier to process, and in the knowledge that having the ticket system crash on you on your ninth film is less frustrating than having it crash on your thirtieth film.

It all seemed to start out well – I got through the initial screen cleanly, I selected my first ten films, went through, and got a Creating Order screen, which stayed cycling for 15 or 20 minutes. At that point I figured it wasn’t going to happen, tried again, and again, several times, each time getting stuck on that one screen. Then I discovered the tickets were down full-stop – the festival tweeted that they’d paused online bookings for the next 15 minutes to try to fix things. And then at noon, just over an hour after the “15 minute pause” started, they were finally back online. And from that point, it was smooth sailing – I was able to purchase all of my tickets pretty easily. (Hopefully the improvement wasn’t just because people just gave up trying, and that the fixes they put in place worked and can be implemented next year.)

But considering it took 2½ hours for me to make my purchases, the whole experience was weirdly stress-free. Unlike last year, where the system kept making me think I was getting somewhere in purchasing my tickets and then would drop out causing me to have wasted all that effort, this year because I kept finding myself stuck on the early screens before I could even get through to my seat selections I never had that all-that-time-wasted experience I had last year. And when they actually took ticketing down, that was even better – at least if no-one is able to buy tickets then I don’t need to stress about the good seats selling out. Plus I was able to actually do some work while I was waiting, which was satisfying. So unlike last year where I was just a bundle of nerves by the end of the process, this year I was pretty much fine.

So the films I’m seeing this year are:

* Birds of Passage
* American Animals
* The Cleaners
* Monterey Pop
* The Kindergarten Teacher
* You Were Never Really Here
* The Green Fog
* Mirai 
* Leave No Trace
* Piercing
* Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story
* The Rider
* Woman at War 
* Angels Wear White 
* Searching
* Mandy
* Madeline’s Madeline
* Three Identical Strangers
* Beirut
* The King
* Transit
* Shoplifters 
* The Guilty 
* Lean on Pete
* Capharnaüm
* Arctic
* McKellen: Playing the Part
* Ash Is Purest White
* Brimstone & Glory
* First Reformed
* The Third Murder
* Border
* Filmworker
* The World Is Yours
* Science Fair
* Wings of Desire
* 3 Faces
* Burning
* Cold War

[EDIT - After the festival started, they had a late confirmation of another film, Prince: Sign O' The Times, which pushes me up to 40 films, a nice round number and far above my previous record of 36.]

Until a couple of years ago, I kept having clashes that stopped me from seeing the Hirokazu Kore-eda films, until I finally saw Our Little Sister a few years ago and decided I need to never miss his film ever again. This year, the festival has two films from him; another one of his slice-of-life family dramas, the Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, as well as the legal thriller The Third Murder. Shoplifters should be great – it seems perfectly in line with the type of film he makes so incredibly well – but I’m almost more curious about The Third Murder, since that’s a type of film that really demands a lot of tension and suspense and that’s not really something I’ve seen in any of the Kore-eda films I’ve seen to date.  I’m excited to see how he does.

The other film I’m most anticipating is the new film from Paul Schrader, First Reformed. Looking at his filmography, I realised that I’ve never actually seen any of his directorial efforts, although I am a fan of his work writing for Scorsese. He’s probably best known for writing Taxi Driver, so I’m intrigued by the fact that pretty much every time I hear the film referenced they always compare it to that film, suggesting it’s as though Travis Bickle were a Protestant minister. A lot of people I respect have rated the film very highly, so I’m anticipating something special.

I’m also really excited by You Were Never Really Here, the new film from Lynne Ramsey with Joaquin Phoenix as a veteran hired to rescue a kidnapped girl. I’d been extremely impressed by Ramsey’s previous film We Need To Talk About Kevin – that film demanded she navigate very delicately around a lot of sensitive and devastating issues, and she managed to explore that film’s central incident of violence while staying true to the horrific act that it was – and so I’m curious to see her exploring what seems to be the space occupied by films like Taken.

I’ve consciously chosen to avoid knowing anything about Leave No Trace, the new Debra Granik film. Winter’s Bone was my favourite film of 2010, an absolute masterpiece, and so I was just satisfied to hear that the response to her new work has been strongly positive as well. It’s been hard to avoid knowing anything about the film – especially since New Zealand actress Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie is one of the leads, which means every Kiwi media outlet is publishing articles announcing how she will break out in the same way Jennifer Lawrence did after Winter’s Bone – but I’ve achieved it. I’m excited to sit down and discover what the film actually is.

As someone whose favourite film is Vertigo, I’m curious about The Green Fog, the new film from Guy Madden (whose work is a real blind spot for me) that apparently uses footage from various movies shot in San Francisco to create what sounds almost like a constructed remake of Hitchcock's greatest film. I don’t know what that will be like, but I’m curious.

There are quite a few documentaries that I’ve heard very good things about. I’m particularly excited about Filmworker, the documentary about Leon Vitali. I’ve known about Vitali for years – he’s a former actor who, after working with Kubrick on Barry Lyndon, decided to leave acting and dedicate his life to being Kubrick’s assistant, doing everything from checking film prints to being acting coach to Danny Lloyd on The Shining, and he’s continued to represent Kubrick’s wishes long after the man died – but he’s someone I don’t really know much about, so that should be fascinating. Similarly, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story – telling the life story of one of the woman who, in addition to being one of the great beautifies of classic Hollywood, was a genius inventor whose work was vital as a precursor to technologies like wifi – is supposed to be excellent. I’ve heard good things about Three Identical Strangers, about three triplets separated at birth who learn of each other’s existence. Science Fair is supposed to be nicely heartwarming, with obvious comparisons to the spelling bee documentary Spellbound. Ian McKellan is an engaging and entertaining speaker, so his interview-documentary will hopefully be fun. And while it’s not a documentary, American Animals apparently does some interesting work incorporating the remembrances of the actual people involved in the true story into the dramatisation; reviews have been mixed, but I liked Bart Layton’s earlier documentary The Imposter, so I’m willing to be hopeful.

Weirdly there are a couple of horse films that feature prominently in my schedule. It’s not really something that would ordinarily appeal to me, but the reviews have been so overwhelmingly positive for both Lean On Pete (a boy-and-his-horse type of story) and The Rider (about a rodeo rider who suffers serious head injuries) that I decided I had to see them both. Indeed, there was a significant amount of effort juggling all of my screenings around to find a way to make a screening of The Rider fit.

I’m generally not a big music person, and wouldn’t ordinarily seek out concert documentaries, but I did really enjoy seeing Woodstock at the Embassy a couple of years ago – seeing a music film like that in the cinema, with not just the big screen but also the big sound, is the best way to experience those movies – so seeing Monterey Pop was an easy choice.

And then there are all the films that just seem interesting. Jafar Panahi continues to thumb his nose at the Iranian authorities that tried to ban him from making movies with his latest “this isn’t actual movie” movie 3 Faces. A documentary about a fireworks festival (Brimstone & Glory) should at least be a nice spectacle on the big screen. I probably would have overlooked Woman at War, but a few weeks ago the film society screened the director’s earlier film Of Horses and Men, which was so fantastic that the need to see his new film became pressing. And The Guilty sounds like it could be fun – a thriller that takes place entirely in an emergency call centre with our hero trying to help one of his callers.

Once again the classic film section is disappointing, with only one film that really holds any interest for me at all. But that one film is Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, which is fantastic. I’ve only seen it once, a number of years ago when it had a Saturday afternoon screening at the film archive. It’s a great film, but that was not the best environment to see the film, so I’m excited to see it at the Embassy. My big disappointment in the retro section was that Raise the Red Lantern, screening in Auckland, isn’t going to be shown down here; when I’d heard that Yimou’s film was screening in the festival I was thrilled as I’d never seen it, so was understandably disappointed to realise the screening was from a 35mm print, as we no longer have any 35mm projectors in Wellington to show the film.

I feel like it’s a pretty strong festival this year. I’m very happy with my film selections, although as always there are a few films I’m gutted I couldn’t make fit (most notably Lucky, the final film starring Harry Dean Stanton). The big thing to me is that pretty much every film I was hoping would be in the festival is in the festival – unlike past years where I’ve been disappointed by just how many films I’ve thought might make the festival but that never screened, this year there are really only two films I had thought might make it. I guess I knew The Man Who Killed Don Quixote was never going to screen – the middling reviews from Cannes and the legal action killed any hope of that happening – but it would have been nice to see the finalised film in the festival since Lost In La Mancha, the documentary about Gilliam’s earlier effort to film the story, was part of the festival 15 years ago. And I’d seen such a strong response to Anton Yelchin’s final film Thoroughbreds, the comedy about two teenage girls planning to murder one of their stepfathers, that I thought that had a good chance of making it as well. Oh well – hopefully I’ll get a chance to see these films on the big screen later.

But those few disappointments aside, it looks like it should be a good festival. Less than three weeks to go.

1043 minutes

So here's the thing.

Back in the years where there were five Best Picture nominees, there was almost always a significant amount of overlap between the Picture nominees and the Director nominees; while it was common for one of the Picture nominees to not have a Director nomination and vice versa, usually you could rely on those awards sharing four out of the five nominations. And that overlap is why, ever since the Academy increased the number of its Picture nominees, I’ve always internally thought of the Director nominees as the “actual” Picture nominees, and the other films are the also-rans. It doesn’t always hold – Argo won Picture without a Director nomination, and this year Three Billboards seems to have a real chance to win despite Martin McDonagh not having been recognised – but for the most part it holds.

Which is why I find the Director nominees so fascinating. I’ve seen a lot of attention focused on the nature of the Director nominees – two first-time directors in Gerwig and Peele and two long-time acclaimed directors who have never before been nominated in Del Toro and Nolan, as well as PT Anderson who is one of our great artists and who has never won. But what I found exciting was the level of involvement these filmmakers had with the film. Each of those films was written by their directors – The Shape of Water was co-written by Del Toro, while the other four films’ directors have sole writing credits. (You can also add Three Billboards in here as well – while the film doesn’t have a Director nomination, Martin McDonagh was the screenwriter on that Picture nominee.) In other words, none of these films are works for hire; these are all films that are intensely personal and shaped and moulded and made by their director into a unique expression of the person they are. Which is not to criticise directors like Spielberg or Guadagnino or Wright, who found scripts that spoke to them and worked hard to make those films theirs. But these five films particular feel specific and intimate and real.

[Comments on Lady Bird, The Shape of Water, Phantom Thread, Get Out, Dunkirk, Darkest Hour, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Post, and Call Me By Your Name after the jump]