The Melbourne International Film Festival starts next week. I’m hoping I’ll have a better experience than last year, where the films I caught were a fairly mixed bag, and the film I enjoyed the most was a fairly unexceptional kung fu flick. (See here and here for my comments at the time). Things are already looking up this year: the experience of working out what I could see has been made much easier by the festival organisers finally listing session times in the main part of the program, with the description of the films.
Once again I’ll be getting a mini-pass, which gets me ten movies: work and other commitments don’t allow me to get any more hardcore than that. The following list is my fairly random selection of what I’m going to see, unapologetically based upon my own interests, so you should treat it as such and not take it as a list of recommendations. A couple of other things things to note: I’m not one of those people who avoids movies that will be opening commercially; if anything, because of this page, I aim for those films because it means I can have a head start in covering them when they do come out (the two New Zealand features and the Herzog film are sure to get a local release, for example). And if you’re after a wide sampling of world cinema, I’m not your man: I’m a genre-cinema freak and there’s no use pretending otherwise. Check out the lists from Paul Martin, over at the Melbourne Film Blog (here), and Mathieu Ravier at Last Night With Riviera (here) if that’s what you’re after.
So with those caveats, here’s my very haphazardly chosen program:
Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog)
I’m a big fan of Herzog, and it’s been a while since he’s had a high-profile fictional feature (it has been his documentaries, such as Grizzly Man, that have received most attention of late). While the plot – a POW story from the Vietnam war – isn’t really my kind of thing, this has received good reviews from overseas and Herzog’s name is enough to get me in the door.
El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
One of the classic midnight movies is getting a single 11:15pm screening. This one is going to test my commitment, because my hunch is this is going to try my patience the way no film since Last Year at Marienbad has. But anyone who has read Danny Peary’s evisceration of this film in his book Cult Movies, or seen the much more positive coverage in the documentary Midnight Movies, will be curious to see this landmark of independent cinema.
Monkey Grip (Ken Cameron)
A chance to see a really important Australian film that I’ve never seen.
Run, Rabbit Run (Bob Ellis)
This is a film by Bob Ellis about Mike Rann. I’m seeing this just because Bob Ellis is such an interesting figure and because the political angle interests me, but I think this is a real roughie.
Eagle vs Shark (Taika Waititi)
This is a New Zealand film about awkward, nerdy romance; it’s a recommendation of a colleague and is supposed to be very funny – although I was disappointed to find it isn’t actually about an actual contest between an eagle and a shark.
Black Sheep (Jonathan King)
Another high-ish profile NZ release, this is a horror movie about killer sheep, and looks like being something of a guilty pleasure. Hopefully it won’t be Baaaaaaa-d.
The Best of Norman McLaren (Norman McLaren)
A retrospective of the very important Canadian animator. I’ve read a lot about McLaren over the years but seen very little of his stuff, so this is an ideal chance to fill a gap.
Manufacturing Dissent: Michael Moore and the Media (Debbie Melnyk, Rick Caine)
I’ve written about the criticisms of Michael Moore before (here), and find the subject of truth and honesty in documentaries very interesting (so see also here, here, and here). I’ll be interested to see if this is just the standard anti-Moore hack job or something a bit more nuanced.
Billy the Kid (Jennifer Vendetti)
A character study of an awkward teen, this forms party of my nerd program (with Eagle vs Shark). This is just a gamble based upon the interesting write-up in the program. These character study documentaries can be very good or very dull, so fingers crossed.
Radiant City (Gary Burns)
A Canadian documentary about suburban sprawl. This is indulging my urban planner interests.
So that’s my program, for what it’s worth. I plan to repeat my pattern from last year of doing capsule reviews through the festival, if you’re interested in hearing how I go. Hopefully there’s nothing as bad as Tideland this time around.
Incidentally, Nobody Knows is playing as part of the Hirokazu Kore-eda retrospective; I reviewed that on its original release (here).