Sydney Film Festival time
Quick reviews of the 8 I've seen so far, 9 to go.
Ikiru: Has not aged well. I think Kurosawa was probably quite a bit more indulgent in the middle act than he could have been. Still a wonderful movie, but maybe hasn't stood the test of time as well as some of his others. 3.5/5
A Quiet Dream: A Chinese-Korean bar owner/caretaker of father in vegetative state engages in an hour and a half of shoegazing with her three lovable loser friends/admirers. I use the word 'lovable' loosely. Not so much pretentious as feeble in substance. 2/5
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail: As a Chinese-Australian, it was a special experience to see a documentary talk about discrimination against Chinese people, and Chinese people stand up for themselves. It's something that they don't do especially well or often, being all about avoiding confrontation and getting on with life. Steve James, who directed Hoop Dreams, delivers maybe the best movie about the overseas Chinese community yet. 4.5/5
Happy End: It's fairly standard Haneke fair, with the banality of evil lurking beneath the surface of everyday (albeit upper class) life. I didn't realise how far below the surface until after the movie though, because the person responsible for subtitles for the movie made the dreadful error of using white subtitles in a critical early scene, on a white background. I missed some important information which turned out to change the meaning of the whole movie. Isabelle Huppert is a tour de force. This wasn't her greatest role, but she's just in so many goddamn good movies seemingly every year. I've probably seen more quality movies with her than any other actress in the last few years, and she only appears in European movies. 4/5
The Hidden Fortress: Some of the set pieces in this Kurosawa samurai epic, famously an inspiration for Star Wars, were tremendous. One scene in particular, in which a horde of slaves pour down the stairs of a castle, is as perfectly conceived and executed as anything I've ever seen. I doubt if 9999 out of 10000 directors with the benefit of today's technology could create something half as good. But again, I think the film suffers from being a little too indulgent at various parts, including Return of the King Syndrome at the end, where it could have ended several scenes earlier. I can see why Kurosawa was famous for running over budget. 4/5
Yojimbo: Maybe the most fun I've had at a Kurosawa movie. Toshiro Mifune is so freakin cool. You can see the influence in Italian (A Fistful of Dollars and the whole trilogy really) and French (Le Samourai) movies later on in the decade. The opening scenes are almost uncharacteristically funky from Kurosawa, like he'd just traveled back from the near future and seen the age of disco. Very satisfying. 4.5/5
I Am Not Your Negro: Race relations in America, as narrated (by Samuel L Jackson) through James Baldwin's notes on an unfinished project about the lives and deaths of his three friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. I'm reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me at the same time, and this documentary seems to touch on some similar themes. It appears Coates has picked up the torch left by Baldwin, who challenged America to consider why the concept of the "negro" exists. It's a beautifully constructed film intercut with footage of Baldwin and other civil rights leaders, films as well as photos and footage from more recent racial conflagrations. Great, and timely. 4.5/5
A Ghost Story: At one point in this movie, a white sheet covered ghost, played by Casey Affleck, stands motionlessly watching his still living wife, Rooney Mara, eat a whole pie. The scene lasts about 5 minutes. A tenth of the nearly full cinema look their leave after 3. I think having seen other glacial paced films (I'm looking at you, Tsai Ming-Liang and Hou Hsiao-Hsien) prepared me well for the battle that was this film. In the end, the pacing was not so much the issue as was the fact that for all the tedium of the journey, A Ghost Story never had a destination it ultimately wanted to go. An exercise in indie indulgence. 2/5.
