Sydney Film Festival: Day 11

It had to happen some time. The last day of the festival, and three films to finish it off.

Nollywood Babylon

Nollywood refers to the Nigerian movie business, one which has boomed since the early nineties and is now only second to Bollywood as the largest film industry in the world. There are hundreds of these movies released every month, filmed on the cheapest stock available: these days, that means digital video. It’s fascinating stuff, and has allowed directors Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal to explore many aspects of not just Nollywood but Nigeria itself: the poverty, the religious fanaticism, the superstitions. Nollywood Babylon, however, opportunity wasted. The film is worth watching for its subject matter, but as a documentary, it’s too unfocused to be called a success. It opens up the world of Nollywood, but there are other documentaries out there on the subject that are, hopefully, more adeptly handled than this one.

5/10

I’ve already discussed my experience of Che at the State Theatre, but here’s an actual review!

Che

Soderbergh’s second film of the festival was two films in itself: a four hour long biopic of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, played by Benicio del Toro, divided into two films. The Argentine deals with his time as a guerrilla in Cuba, helping Fidel Castro (here played by Demián Bichir) overthrow the Batista regime. The Guerrilla follows his similar struggles in the jungles of Bolivia. The whole thing is played in a straightforward manner, with both films focusing on the drudgeries of the campaigns - living off the map, the dangerous battles - more than the politics of them.

The films are based on the writings of Guevara himself, so they have authenticity (save for a jarring Matt Damon cameo in The Guerrilla). This can make for a challenging four hours: by showing in miniature Che and the guerrillas living in the jungle, we really get a feel for how hard this life was. The consequence is that both films are made up of largely slow-moving scenes of said difficulty, punctuated by (quite thrilling) action sequences. Del Toro disappears into the role, and he's surrounded by similarly impressive, for the most part lesser-known character actors. It's all very admirable: Soderbergh has made a movie with an anti-commercial movie with a sizable budget which mixes very well made action set-pieces with slow character study. It is, in fact, more admirable than it is successful as a cinematic experience. A worthy film, and worth seeing... but just the once.

6/10

From a highbrow study of one of the 20th Century's most important and divisive figures from an indie auteur to... Nazi zombies. Should be the most perfect way to end the festival, right?

Dead Snow

Nazi zombies. Nazi zombies, chainsaws, disembowelment, and snowmobiles. In motherfucking Norway. This should be the greatest movie of all time. It should be a movie so amazing that they stop teaching Citizen Kane in film theory classes; this becomes the film that defines cinematic storytelling for a generation; perhaps for all time. But on the pantheon of horror-comedy, Dead Snow is not alongside Brain Dead, the film it wants to be. In quality, it's closer to Club Dread. Or Cut.

Tommy Wirkola's film has a group of eight medical students holidaying in a remote cabin in the Norwegian mountains. We know from the start something's wrong, when one of the eight doesn't arrive at the cabin, attacked and killed in the opening scene. The others are none the wiser until the arrival of a man credited as The Wanderer (Bjørn Sundquist) but who should have been named Mr. Fucking Stupid Exposition. He tells our group that the land they're on was once overrun by Nazis who terrorised a nearby town, but were killed by its vengeful inhabitants. He soon leaves, and the Nazis - now, without reason, undead - arrive.

Dead Snow redefines the term "one-note". It's a movie made by a fan of horror films, which can often lead to greatness - see Shaun of the Dead - but it can also lead to a Rob Zombie film. There's plenty of mayhem, a lot of violence, and a surprising amount of intestinal matter on display. Somehow, though, it's just not as fun as it should be. It aims to be so over the top that it's funny, but it doesn't get there. The biggest sin of the film is wasting the Nazi zombies. How do we know the zombies are Nazis? Other than Mr Fucking Stupid Exposition talking about the Nazi infestation, they have swastikas on their arms. That's it. There could have been some boundaries pushed. There could have been some really off-colour humour at play. It doesn't help that the film is Norwegian, so every last character is so Aryan that they'd make a card-carrying KKK member blush, but the bloody destruction of already dead Nazis could have been so much more satisfying if there was some sort of revenge at play. They're barely even zombies! They run, they talk, they fucking plan things! A film that promises Nazi zombies essentially delivers neither of these things!

There are a few fun moments, some creative gore, and there are worse horror-comedies around - Lesbian Vampire Killers has recently clawed its way to the top of that shit heap. Dead Snow, however, just isn't the romp it should be.

4/10

And thats it. The festival ended not with a bang, but with the splutter of a dying chainsaw.

Lessons Learned

• Che Guevara must have been the hungriest Marxist ever.

• Franke Potente of Run Lola Run can pass for South American.

• With Dead Snow following Cold Prey (and Cold Prey II!) Norwegians really like naming their half-arsed horror movies after the weather.

Sydney Film Festival: Days 9 and 10

Friday Night: it was time to watch some dudes fuckin'.

Humpday

Lynn Shelton's American refreshingly indie indie has a simple premise: two straight guys decide to make a porno where they sleep with each other. It managers to be as funny as it sounds, but not quite in the way you might expect.

Mark Duplass, of the mumblecore movement, plays Ben, a man just starting to try for a child with his wife Anna (Alycia Delmore). It's his last stop on the train to being a fully licenced suburbanite, when his college friend Andrew (Joshua Leonard, of The Blair Witch Project) knocks on his door at 2am, a drifter looking to reconnect. When Andrew ends up at a party full of free-spirited creative types, Ben joins him, and they are informed of a high-brow art-porn short film festival. In their drunken and drugged state, they decide to make a film together; Ben even books a hotel room. Over the next two days, the two refuse to back down to each other, both wanting to save face; neither wants to be seen to be boxed in by boundaries of sexuality or lack of artfulness.

It's a three-hander. All the humour in this film comes not from bawdy sex jokes (not that there's not room for that in cinema) but from the interactions of the three core cast members, who are uniformly hilarious. The Internet Movie Database doesn't have a writer credited; this may be a mistake, but the naturalness of the dialogue indicates that the film was fully improvised. It's also very easy to identify with the characters; the threat of becoming just another suburb-dweller is scary; this is what our characters are fighting against. While low-key indies of this type can be so low-key as to be impossible to get into, this has enough forward momentum and humour so it avoids that trap.

8/10

Saturday brought two more films, and two (!) sightings, at last, of Hugo Weaving.

The Girlfriend Experience

Steven Soderbergh deserves credit for, in between studio efforts, experimenting with both storytelling and film distribution. The Girlfriend Experience is his latest effort, starring Sascha Grey as Chelsea, a high-class prostitute offering the experience of the title to her wealthy clients, while juggling a having a boyfriend Chris (Chris Santos) and her business in a time of economic crisis. There's also a subplot of Chris going to Las Vegas with a group of businessmen as he tries to get ahead in the gym industry.

The Girlfriend Experience is competently done; it's got a handheld digital aesthetic that might put some people off but gives a nice sense of immediacy to proceedings. The acting is fine; Sascha Grey is carries the film well enough, but Chelsea is such a shut-off, unemotive character that this can't have been too much of a challenge. The themes explored are interesting enough: central is the idea of having a loving relationship when one party openly sleeps with a lot of other people, even if there is no emotional connection to those outside the relationship. It's also perhaps the first film to explicitly, and frequently, reference the current financial crisis. But the film is bogged down by an irritating, cut-up structure. It's not a difficult to follow story, exactly, even if it's not clear at what point in the story Chelsea's sexual encounters fit; perhaps this is the point. But it serves as a barrier to a viewer getting emotionally involved in the story. Again, perhaps this is the point, but it makes the movie an worthy experiment about a collection of interesting themes, rather than something to rush out and see.

5/10

Following The Girlfriend Experience was my only retrospective film of the festival.

Wake in Fright

Wake in Fright is an important film in Australian cinema history: were it not for Wake in Fright, there might not be Australian cinema today. While that might be an overstatement, the film kickstarted an industry that was nearly dead, with a willingness to show Australians in a light far from flattering. It took Ted Kotcheff, a Canadian, to do it.

John Grant (Gary Bond) is a teacher; an Englishman trapped at a school in the Australian outback. It's the end of the school year, and he's going to Sydney to see his fiance. To get to Sydney, he has to pass through the town of Bundanyabba: "The Yabba". He encounters the locals, among them the friendly but pushy digger Jock Crawford (Chips Rafferty), depressive Jannette (Sylvia Kay), and alcoholic Doc Tydon (Donald Pleasence). Stranded there due to some foolish gambling attempts, John finds himself sucked into the town's fixation on a lifestyle of drinking, violence, and little else.

There isn't a huge amount in the film's plot that would classify it as a thriller, but that doesn't stop it from being an unsettling experience from start to end. Kotcheff captures the alcohol-drenched lifestyle from a sober point of view and drags his audience in, only to leave them in harsh sunlight at the end of it. The atmosphere of the film is spot on. Performances are uniformly excellent, especially Bond's headstrong and cold Grant and Pleasence's disturbing Doc Tydon. He's a character who's hard to shake from your mind after leaving the film. On a technical point of view, the film looks great: it was once thought lost, with only edited VHS and poor-quality bootlegs available. But the film was found in full form and remastered to perfection. Even if it wasn't so important to Australia's cinema history, Wake in Fright would remain vital viewing. A lost gem found.

9/10

After the film there was a question and answer question with Kotcheff, editor Anthony Buckley (responsible for tracking down the film) and actor Jack Thompson, whose first major screen role was in Wake in Fright. The story of tracking the film down is as amazing as the film itself: Buckley travelled the world to find the lost reels, arriving in England a week after it has been shipped away. He followed it to Pittsburgh, where it was in a vault marked "for destruction". Had he been a week late, the film would be gone forever. They discussed the restoration process. It had to be done frame by frame, as an automatic digital clean-up would remove flies from shots. Kotcheff talked about Chips Rafferty, an Australian actor who died after Wake in Fright was released. While other actors would drink non-alcoholic beer, Rafferty refused, drinking glass after glass with no effect.

Kotcheff's work on Weekend at Bernie's was not discussed.

Lessons Learned

• 10am is too early for a film.

• Or at least for a film as disappointing as The Girlfriend Experience.
  

Sydney Film Festival: Day 7

Five fucking films. Five of them! Due to an abundance of spare tickets, Day 7 was deemed random shit day, where a bunch of films I knew little-to-nothing about were picked. That’s sometimes where one finds gold at a festival. Sometimes it isn’t.

That covered four of the films. The fifth was a last minute addition: realising that the two hour break in the day coincided with the only time any of my friends would be actually in a movie, I decided to try to get a ticket, even though it had been sold out. That movie was Coraline, and there was a spare ticket: thank you, whoever overbooked! Then, the realization. Five fucking movies.

Let’s start with the ones I didn’t make it through. This shit’s all out of order; I’m Tarantinoing it here.

Parque Via (Film Two)

This is one of those films where a person (often elderly, as is the case here) wanders around doing nothing, while the filmmaker tries to rely on their presence alone to warrant the existence of the film, and its reason for being in front of an audience. Here, it actually works to some extent. Nolberto Coria (a non actor, of course) does somehow carry the film while doing not much. He wanders around a sprawling mansion, to be occasionally visited by a prostitute (you see her pubes, that means it’s arty), but largely doing mundane tasks. This is somehow not quite tear-your-eyes-out dull. It’s not thrill-a-minute, but oddly watchable.

But I was hungry, and didn’t have any other time in which to hunt and gather. Sorry, Parque Via. Apparently it kicks into gear in act three. DVD, ahoy!

Everyone Else (Film Five)

Everyone Else, written and directed by Maren Ade, is another fine film. It concerns a young German couple, Gitti (Birgit Minichmayr) and Chris (Lars Eidinger), on their holiday, staying in Chris’s married-with-children sister’s unoccupied house. Focused on small moments and quiet lies, it’s an interesting look at the couple’s avoidance to become like the everyone else of the title. Minichmayr and Eidinger are both great in their roles; Minichmayr brings a particular life to things.

But it was late; Coraline’s 3D glasses made things a tad headachey; the late-running of Coraline, as well, meant a bad seat, right at the front – neck strain! – so Everyone Else became another casualty. A shame; it deserved better treatment.

And back to the start.

Tony Manero (Film One)

Raúl (Alfredo Castro) in his fifties and living under Pinochet in Chile. It is the late seventies, and he is obsessed with Saturday Night Fever. The film begins with Raúl entering a lookalike contest for John Travolta’s character in that film: Tony Manero. He also choreographs and dances with a small group, including his sometimes-girlfriend and her daughter, at a ratty bar, and occasionally dabbles in unexpected and horrific acts of violence, usually to help further himself in his quest to become Manero.

So it’s an odd film, but a fascinating one. The reign of Pinochet is ever-present but for most of the film kept to the outskirts. The focus of the film, and it’s main character, is on a disposable piece of American pop-culture: this is a clear commentary on America’s help to Pinochet at the time. Intellectually, then, there’s definitely a lot going on; entertainment-wise, the film can be a bit distancing and slow moving, but is difficult to pull away from. It would probably work better for a viewer with understanding of Chile’s recent history, but is engaging for those willing to be patient with it.

7/10

The Beaches of Agnes (Film Three)

Agnes Varda: we meet again. After The Gleaners and I, her well-regarded but annoying and pretentious documentary, we’ve not had the best relationship. So a film both by and about her, won’t be my best friend. And this documentary could be accused of being self-indulgent, but with the life Varda has led – before and after she started being a filmmaker – you can’t begrudge her this. As well as jumping, often out-of-order, through her life, the film allows her to exhibit her various filmic fascinations; odd framing, what happens outside the frame, and so-on. Varda made the film after turning eighty, and she still makes a lively and funny (and sometimes heartbreaking) screen presence and storyteller.

8/10

Then, the battle. Coraline was having its Australian premiere; a red carpet event with Teri Hatcher present. There had been a red carpet event earlier in the festival – for the Australian film Cedar Boys – but that was a sadder affair; the carpet ran about three metres in length tucked away at the back of Greater Union’s lobby, it was roped off but not security was needed. It was more of a red rug affair, really. This was a little bigger, with about two metres of the lobby allocated for thoroughfare. With the gawkers wanting to catch a glimpse of the Desperate Housewives star (people still watch it – I was shocked too!) that gave a path of about half an inch wide for people who just wanted to get to their damn movie.

Coraline (Film Four)

The much-loved Nightmare Before Christmas, despite being more associated with Tim Burton, was actually directed by Henry Selick. His latest has him tackling the ideas of another cult hero: Neil Gaiman. Both films are striking in their style, and both have rather simple stories. But while Nightmare was tiresome with uninspiring songs, Coraline is a delight, in its visuals, humour, music and characterisation.

Coraline (Dakota Fanning) is the daughter of a pair of garden book writers who have just moved across the country to a large house made up of three apartments, the other two inhabited by strange, deluded folks. Her parents (voiced by Teri Hatcher and John Hodgeman) are caring but busy; this coupled with her mother’s tendency towards impatience makes them, in Coraline’s eyes, neglectful. Coraline discovers a small passage in the house that leads to another version of her world; a world where Coraline gets everything she wants, where her parents are devoted, where everything is magical, including her neighbours, and everyone has buttons for eyes.

The story is simplistic, yes: another Alice in Wonderland coupled with mother-issues tale from Gaiman. It’s handled with swiftness, fun and enough horror and creepiness (for a children’s film, at least) to make it entertaining. But it is the visuals which lift the film: this is perhaps the most gorgeous stop-motion film to hit cinemas, and such a feast for the eyes that the story almost doesn’t matter. Almost. The 3D – although the glasses are annoying – improves these visuals even more, even if an occasional break is needed. Outside of Pixar’s stable, this might be the best American animated film in years.

8/10

Lessons Learned

• I can’t do five movies in a day. I’m not the man I was in 2006.
• The Nightmare Before Christmas was, in that case, all Tim Burton’s fault.

Sydney Film Festival: Special Edition

More proper reviews to come; here's a special one in the meantime.

The Guy Sitting Next to Me During Che

Sydney's State Theatre is a fantastic venue, ornate and huge; inside, it's difficult to believe such a cavern can fit into the city's CBD. It not, however, the most comfortable of venues. Multiplexes such as the nearby Greater Union have a lot less going for them aesthetically, but for the two part, four hour experience that is Steven Soderbergh's Che, one almost wishes for a more comfortable, if tackier, venue. One also wishes not to be seated next to a hippopotamus.

Hippoman provided an interesting and unpredictable cinema experience. Many questions were raised during the time seated next to him. What is that noise he's making? Will he cover his mouth next time he coughs? How far into my seat is he capable of spilling? The answers: it wasn't clear; if he felt like it; as far as he pleased.

Not everything about him was discovered. Hippoman wore a jaunty hat, and his moustache was trimmed. He took care of these aspects of his appearance, and yet not his most noticeable flaw: his girth. During intermission, he left behind the bag with the name of the store from which he had bought his feed: Sugar Fix. It would perhaps have been more appropriate had his snackage come from Fruit and Vegetable Fix instead.

For all his flaws - his coughing; the snore-like sounds he made despite not being asleep; the picking of his nails; and so on - his phone never rang. He didn't commit the (pun intended) biggest crime of cinemagoing, just a (pun intended) large number of smaller ones. It was almost something to be thankful for. Almost.

2/10

Sydney Film Festival: Day 6

Canadian horror and Japanese animation were on the cards for day six of the festival, with a special guest appearance by the freezing fucking cold that's just hit Sydney town.

Pontypool

Pontypool is half of a great film. Then it doesn't so much derail as jump to a new set of tracks completely. It's easiest to refer to it as a zombie movie, but it's not, in the same way that 28 Days Later isn't. Here the threat is an infection that causes a vicious madness in people, spread not through the air, or through biting, but through language.

Steven McHattie is Grant Mazzy, a grizzled radio announcer posted in a small radio station in a church's basement in the Canadian town of Pontypool. He's always at odds with his producer, Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle). Also at the station is Laurel Anne (Georgina Reilly), the technical controller back from Afghanistan. On a cold Valenitine's morning, the three are together in the station when a series of ever-more-strange reports start leaking in.

Here's where the film works best. The claustrophobia and confusion is palpable as it's not clear if there is a growing threat outside, if there is even a threat at all. Tension is created – fittingly enough, given the film's focus on language – through words alone, sometimes from voices from the outside, sometimes through the three core characters speculations.

There are two snags the film hits. When the threat does come to the church, it's just not as scary as when it was just talked about, even though this is when our characters are in actual danger. The film is based on the novel Pontypool Changes Everything by Tony Burgess, who also wrote the screenplay. What the madness does to people seem as if it would come off as more effective in the book; here, speculation suggests that the budget just doesn't allow this to completely be shown. This third act slump is a common affliction in horror, and it doesn't destroy what came before it. The bigger snag comes with the arrival of a character to the studio, one talked about previously in the film. He arrives as a bizarre deus ex machina spouting unnecessary exposition that somehow manages to confuse things more than before he arrived. His arrival brings an absurdism not present in the first slow burning part of the film that doesn't quite leave even after he does.

Nonetheless, the strength of the concept and the first half (not to mention McHattie's performance, and his amazing voice) of the film make this worth seeking out. The rest seems like it would work better in novel form, so perhaps Pontypool Changes Everything is, even moreso than the film, one to track down.

6/10

I'm not what you'd call an anime fan, so asking me for an opinion on most anime films for me is like a vegan commenting on a cheeseburger. Nonetheless, here it is:

The Sky Crawlers

Mamoru Oshii's work is beloved by anime fans, and even has crossover appeal. Ghost in the Shell had robot sex or something in it, and who doesn't love a good bout of robot sex? His latest, based on the manga series by Mori Horoshi has fighter pilots in permanent adolescence in an alternate reality that mixes today's world with that of the Second World War. Well, that's kind of cool too. Also they smoke and occasionally fuck, but never with robots.

The Sky Crawlers is rich in ideas and plot elements which leak out over the course of its two-hour running time. Our main character, Yuichi, is trying to find out what happened to the pilot he replaced at the academy, while audience is trying to figure out exactly how the world we're watching functions. That's a problem. Most of the characters know most of what is revealed; even Yuichi knows much of what's going on, and his investigation less resembles detective work than sleepwalking into explanations. But the fact that information known to every character in the film is kept from the audience is frustrating rather than intriguing. It's a shame since these ideas are interesting; if the world was set up clearly early in the film, we could have been in for a deeper examination of it. The animation is quite stunning, although the mix of intricately detailed backgrounds with rather basic character design is nearly as distancing as the film's plot and snail-like pace.

It's not a total loss: the aforementioned concepts have some merit, and late in the film a character has a great monologue on the nature of war. The airborne battle scenes, too, are quite stunning, although it's often difficult to tell who is fighting who – given the film's themes, this maybe a deliberate choice. It's not enough, though; not to justify the film's running time, nor to recommend it to anyone who isn't an anime fan.

4/10

I have watched Perfect Blue and Paprika and enjoyed them, and Spirited Away was really, really quite pretty. For the sake of full disclosure. But on the whole, anime? It leaves me chilly.

Lessons Learned

• If you're worried about seeing someone you don't want to talk to at the festival, wear a hoodie! There's no disguise more perfect or subtle.
  
• French Canadians are dangerous. I think that was the moral of the story in Pontypool, anyway.

Sydney Film Festival: Day 5

Still no Hugo Weaving, the bastard. I had to settle for gritty Australian convict cannibalism and fake blaxploitation instead.

Van Diemen's Land

Alexander Pierce has influenced a lot of entertainment of late; it's like he's a volcano and it's the mid-nineties. Earlier in the year, ABC screened a factual film, The Confession of Alexander Pearce, and his legend was used as the basis for the awful Dying Breed, where his descendants are the villains. Now Van Diemen's Land shows his story as it played out: a group of eight convicts, upon escaping their penal colony, resort to cannibalism to stave of starvation. If you ever wanted a film that could make cannibalism boring, Van Diemen's Land has granted your wish.

The Sydney Film Festival's organizers have put the film alongside Dead Snow and Paranormal Activity in the horror strand. Their failing here can't be held against the film; that would the same as begrudging Finding Nemo after being told it was a film noir. It's not scary or fast moving, but it's not supposed to be. It's barely even a thriller: it's a drama. While Van Diemen's Land cannot be faulted for being a genre film without tension, it can be faulted for being a drama without tension. We start the film by meeting eight convicts in the mid-1800s in what now is Tasmania. They escape, led by one who doesn't appear to actually know where he is heading. It is out of desperation that the idea of cannibalism is raised.

The production values here are great. It almost does feel as if the filmmakers – it's Jonathan auf der Heide's feature debut – were dropped into the bushland a century and a half ago, and hired local actors. Authenticity is high; everything's dirty and dangerous, and any romanticised ideas of Australian colonial life are thrown out the window. Here, the straightforwardness of the story lets it down. Events simply unfold without any turns. The convicts walk; one is killed and eaten, they walk some more, then another is offed. Ethical questions aren't really raised, although that may have made this film Alive 2: The Convicts, so we can be thankful for that. It would have helped were we given a character to let us into the story. Pearce himself (Oscar Redding, who cowrote the film with auf der Heide), is the closest to a lead character, but no attempts beyond the occasional arty voiceover are made to help us to understand him. Auf der Heide is happy to just show the slow journey and the forces of nature instead.

The problem is the story. "Convicts resort to cannibalism" makes an interesting sentence, but not a two-hour feature, when that's all that happens. In prose form, with access to the inner workings of the convicts, but that lacks here. Despite the impressive production and the fine acting, this film just doesn't grab. It aims for bleak, but hits dreary.

4/10

Since seeing Van Diemen's Land I've come across more positive reviews than negative, and after talking to other festival-goers who have seen it, I seem to be in the minority in my opinion. Turns out I'm an artless pleb.

Black Dynamite

Jive suckers.

Sick of spoofs yet? When those motherfuckers Seltzer and Goldberg churn out a new [Blank] Movie every thirty seconds that lampoon the most fleeting elements of pop culture simply be recreating them; when the Wayans brothers are ripping of those two, who were ripping them off in the first place; when even David Zucker has lost his touch, by celebrating US conservatism and, even worse, not being funny when he does so, we're in trouble. That's what makes Black Dynamite so refreshing: it won't date, as it actually feels like it comes from the period it's spoofing, and belongs to the genre: 70s blaxploitation. The jokes will still work in a decade's time. Also: it's fucking hilarious. That helps things.

The titular Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White, who also cowrote) is a badass former CIA agent from the CIA who sets out to avenge the death of his brother, after promising in adolescence to their dying mother that he'll never let him die. He follows the trail from his local neighbourhood, soon uncovering a nefarious honky plot that leads to China and all the way to Washington. Black Dynamite is a funny character in himself, but at the same time, is a genuine action figure. This helps cement the film in the seventies, as if it were actually made then – and at times it's easy to forget that it wasn't. It does this as well as Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, which takes apart bad 80s television horror, but is even funnier.

There's some slight lag in the middle of the film but laughs still come throughout. The soundtrack, by Adrian Younge, deserves special praise too, not just (as with everything on display) for feeling so period-real, but for being so spot-on funny. Director Scott Sanders has done such good work here, if the film weren't so perfectly contained, I wouldn't complain about him handling a number of sequels chronicling Black Dynamite's further adventures. As it is, the film is destined for cult status. It is deserved.

8/10

I was running out of synonyms for "funny" there. Word suggested "mirthful". Fuck you, Word.

Lessons Learned

• Cannibalism isn't as glamorous as Anthony Hopkins will have you believe.
  
• Cannibalism isn't as funny as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 would have you believe.
  
• People still have to try a lot harder if they want to beat Dying Breed at being the worst thing inspired by Alexander Pearce
  

Sydney Film Festival: Day 4

We're having a Hugo Weaving spotting competition at the festival. Whoever sees Hugo Weaving most frequently at the festival wins, and gets to be master of the universe.

So far, I'm losing.

500 Days of Summer

Films have, in the past, capitalized on the delightfulness of Zooey Deschanel, but 500 Days of Summer is the first to use it as a premise. Here, she plays Summer, a free spirited girl who catches the eye of Tom (Joseph Gordon Levitt), a trained architect earning a living by working for card company. This is, at first glance, a romantic comedy, although that's not quite accurate. Tom falls for Summer, Summer seems to return his affections. But while Tom believes in true love and fate, Summer doesn't, nor does she even believe in giving their relationship a name.

The film is Marc Webb's debut feature. He comes from a music video background, and it shows; it's all very visually impressive. There's also some experimentation in storytelling: the film is out of order, with each sequence preceded by a title card of which day of Tom knowing Summer it is. Scenes of his happiest times are put next to his worst. There are other flourishes: Tom finds himself in a French New Wave film; there's a split-screen sequence where Tom's expectations are played right alongside what actually happens.

If this sounds gimmicky, it is. It's not enough to sink the film (and, in the case of the fantasy dance number to Hall and Oates, it can be brilliant) but 500 Day's strengths aren't in its postmodern techniques. The film captures emotions perfectly: that lift from falling for someone; the heartbreak when they don't fall back. It captures these emotions as well as recent films such as Eternal Sunshine and Before Sunset have. When most films labeled as "romantic" "comedies" fall about as far from romance as the Hostel films and are as authentic about relationships as Teletubbies is about rural British life, this comes as a refreshing change.

Gorden Levitt doesn't need to prove himself an excellent actor after Brick and Mysterious Skin, but here he shows he can carry a crowd pleasing film, while Deschanel is wonderful – she'd have to be, as only M. Night Shyamalan can make her otherwise. The films biggest failing comes from Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber's script. It's far from terrible, but it doesn't soar. One-liners should be snappier, supporting characters should be more fleshed out. Tom is the lead character here, and everything we see is through his subjective viewpoint, but we never properly get to know Summer, despite the movie being named for her. It's still well handled enough to be an enjoyable film, but if more effort had been put into these elements rather than the scripts stylistic choices, 500 Days of Summer could have been great rather than merely good.

7/10

By the way, 500 Days of Summer really is Stuff White People Like: the movie. It doesn't belong on the list; it is the list.

Lessons Learned

• Hugo Weaving prefers Norwegian nazi zombies to capital-I Indie romance.
  

Sydney Film Festival: Day 3

Friday night brought one of the most anticipated films of the festival, based on a brilliant UK series; it was preceded by an Australian short film featuring a number of Australian comedians that may, at first glance, seem a tad self indulgent. Guess which one was better!

The Last Supper

Angus Sampson's short film reimagines the titular last supper as a bawdy work lunch populated by a number of Australia's favourite comedians and Leigh Whannel, the guy largely responsible for the Saw series. It's togas and goblets, but our characters don't fit into the period.

There are a couple of laughs here, and the man who played Jesus – who is the elderly indigenous actor Jack Charles, for some reason – has real presence. However, this is a Tropfest concept stretched out for twice as long as a Tropfest film. When the seven minutes of a Tropfest film often feels like too much, you haven't experienced it for fifteen of them. The film is lumbered with a post-script scene after what feels like the ending that, in the tradition of the film, goes for far too long; then there's more stuff in the credits that, once again, runs too long. Cute concept, but much more (or less) was needed to make it a successful piece of comedy.

3/10

In the Loop

Armando Ianucci's series The Thick of It is probably the best British comedy of the last decade, and one of the most mean-spirited series ever made. It highlights on the spin and inadequacies of government by focusing on its lower levels; members of cabinet, their advisors, and, most memorably, the Prime Minister's Chief Enforcer, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi): a terrifying, foul-mouthed Scot, always in complete control of everything around him.

Tucker makes to transition to the big screen for In the Loop, a spin-off feature film that's as good as the series; that is to say, it's brilliant.

We don't quite have The Thick of It: The Movie here. Only Tucker, his second-in-command Jamie MacDonald (Paul Higgins) – an even angrier Scot – and, very briefly, reporter Angela Heaney (Lucinda Raikes) return from the series. That said, most of the rest of the cast return in some capacity, playing new, if similar. A new element is added in the form of the US government: the film centres around relations between the United States and the United Kingdom, and their movements towards a war in the Middle East.

Everyone here is spot on: newcomers to the cast include Tom Hollander as the hapless minister Simon Foster and Gina McKee as his bitchy head of media Judy; on the other side of the pond, James Gandolfini is as scary as he is funny as Lt. General George Miller, and Anna Chlumsky – yes, from My Girl – does good work as a congresswoman's harried assistant Liza Weld. Returning players in new roles – Chris Addison, James Smith, among others – are absolutely as good as they were in series.

The strength of the cast is matched by the quality of the script, and the improvisations they bring to it. In the Loop is one of the most quotable films in years, with some of the finest abusive language ever to hit cinema screens. The plot itself might take more than one viewing to properly grasp: the outcome is clear, but the machinations that lead up to it are so intricate and the film so quickly paced that it takes a second look to work out who's backstabbing who, and when. In the Loop is good enough for a second viewing, however, and a number more. It's fitting that one of the best UK comedy films in years arises from one of its best shows.

9/10

If you haven't seen the series, track it down. You won't regret it.

Lessons Learned

• Swearing makes everything funnier.

• There is a way to make a Tropfest film even worse.

Sydney Film Festival: Day 1

It begins. The only time of the year that Sydney is a city actually worth living in.

It started with a night of double third wheelin': I saw Food, Inc. with friends Fran and Kent, and then jumped ship to Oliver and Amy for Paranormal Activity. It's okay; I got my hand held during the scary bits.

Food, Inc.

This documentary by Robert Kenner should be the next entry at Stuff White People Like. It also happens to be indispensible.

Food, Inc. is similar in substance to 2003's The Corporation, only rather than tackling capitalism as a whole, it focuses on the food industry. There's no one narrator; rather interviews serve as voice-over: most prominently Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Michael Pollan, who wrote The Omnivore Dilemma. Beyond them, we meet farmers, workers and activists.

Prepare to be guilted. If you've ever set foot in a supermarket or a fast food restaurant, this movie will make you feel bad for doing so. We meat-eaters know where our food comes from; I doubt few people would be unaware that animal care practices these days aren't of the highest standards. Here, it's really highlighted. Not just animal treatment, but how they're fed and kept for the sake of growing animals bigger, faster and cheaper.

Food, Inc. points the finger – and may not be surprised to hear this – at corporations, as well as the government for subsidizing their practices and for the ineffectuality of the FDA. It's all eye-opening, but it wouldn't be a strong film if it left its audience up this creek without a paddle. Fortunately the film offers solutions – what individuals can do to try to make a change. Message-heavy documentaries such as Food, Inc. need this element. If they were simple to list a series of problems, they would almost be rendered pointless.

There's a lot of insight here. We meet a farmer who continues to use organic practices and refuses to go commercial and expand, as well as a former activist whose organic food company is sold at supermarkets all over the US – he has no illusions that the corporations he sells to buy his products for business rather than ethical reasons, but sees capitalism as a tool that he can use for change. We also see how intellectual property laws, of all things, are used against farmers growing crops.

The film is one-sided, of course – we see few arguments defending the food industry – and is certainly preaching to the choir. But if this little, well made, fascinating, troubling and eye-opening documentary – apologies to Stephanie Meyer for the number of adjectives I just used – can make it big, maybe change can be a possibility. If you watch this movie, you'll know why we need it.

9/10

Paranormal Activity

Katie (Katie Featherson) and Micah (Micah Sloat) are a happy, ordinary couple who have just moved in together, who have discovered that the entity that has been haunting Katie on and off since she was eight years old has taken up residence as well. The film is entirely through the lens of the camera that Micah has bought to document what's going on. What some may call a Blair Witch Project rip-off manages to be one of the scariest movies in years. Scary: not grotesque, not shocking, but something to bring back that fear of the dark you thought you lost years ago.

The film is set over a period of three weeks, starting without a studio logo – just a thank you to the families of Lisa and Micah, and the San Diego police for the footage – and ending with director Oren Peli getting the only credit, as the editor. It's not real, of course, but the authenticity – naturalistic dialogue, unknown performers – helps Paranormal Activity to no end. The characters aren't larger than life, but are interesting; Katie has known this phenomenon all her life and is getting increasingly upset by it, while Micah starts the film fascinated by it but as it goes on he positions himself, narcissistically, as the hero.

The structure of the film is the reason it works so well. Micah is constantly filming, often against the behest of Katie. Every night the camera is put on a tripod facing the couple's bed and the doorway into their room. During this set up, we get a subtitle ("Night 1", "Night 3") and a timecode. It's here that the creepiness really sets in. On each of these night set ups, things get progressively scarier – what starts as some sounds and the movement of a door early on gives way to things far worse – and soon the audience is audibly filled with dread the moment these sequences begin, to the point where, by Night 21 (hell, even Night 13) it's almost too much to take.

The scares are lo-fi – no CG demons mugging for the camera – and therein lies their believability, and the terror of the film. Paranormal Activity is the best American horror film in recent memory, and one of the scariest movies of the decade. Good luck getting to sleep after this one.

9/10

This horror subgenre – the found footage movies that can be traced back to Cannibal Holocaust but more recently, of course, to The Blair Witch Project, to the point of accusations of ripping it off – should, by all rights, be dead by now. Yet, against all odds, a number of them continue to impress. Rec was fantastic, Cloverfield was a lot of fun, My Little Eye and The Last Horror Movies weren't great, but interesting. The only out-and-out misfire I can remeber is, tellingly, by an experienced filmmaker. George Romero's Diary of the Dead failed, largely, because he refused to let go of theatrical dialogue and acting styles. And music, for Christ's sake – the music nearly undermined the whole experience on its own. Cloverfield wasn't exactly Curb Your Enthusiasm in how naturalistically it was played, but it still had just enough of an air of realism to make it work.

Sadly it seems that Paranormal Activity is being held to ransom by Dreamworks, who bought the rights to the film years ago. There was talk of a remake, by Peli himself, but now the status of that is unclear. If they're not going to do that, they have a perfectly terrifying film that they should release to an unsuspecting public as soon as possible.

The Dawn of a New Blog

Was it a love of film which started this blog? A desire to wax lyrical on all things cinematic, coupled with a narcissistic desire to have people actually read my words? To inform people on the celluloid treats they might just be missing.

Maybe those things are at the heart of it, but they weren't the catalyst.

That would be Lesbian Vampire Killers.

I saw this film, with my friend Sam, for free, thanks to the kind people behind the great Night of Horror film festival, which runs in Sydney every March. They do good work to try to bring the kind of horror films that don't tend to make Australian cinema screens – they're not remakes or Saw sequels, see – like foreign horror films or English-language indie ones. Foreign and indie films seem to exist in the higher range of film respectability, and horror in the lower, so these movies exist in an awkward place.

The point is that the Night of Horror folk are fantastic, and they can't be held responsible. Especially after they showed Splinter earlier this year, which was absolutely tops. This showing of Lesbian Vampire Killers was a press screening, just one with no actual press. The large Fox Studios cinema was less full than a Sydney stadium during an AFL game. Even tumbleweeds were too embarrassed to be there.

Here's some context. Previous films I recently haven't paid for include 17 Again (for a review) and Twilight (for a laugh). I made it to the end of those. So, with that in mind, here's a review.

The first forty-five minutes of Lesbian Vampire Killers

Shaun (Simon Pegg) is having problems. His girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) has just left him, and not even his best friend Ed (Nick Frost) and a few rounds of beers can get him out of the dumps. The pair soon find themselves facing hoards of the undead in this hilarious (and, yes, sometimes scary) horror-comedy directed by Edgar Wright.

Sorry, that's a review of Shaun of the Dead, the film Lesbian Vampire Killers wants to be. It attempts the same character dynamic, the same comedy mix of slacker humour and over the top violence (although mostly without the money-shots), the Edgar Wright smash-wipes. Director Phil Claydon, two writers from Balls of Steel and everyone else involved on the production, down to the runners, get all of it wrong. Here, best friends Jimmy (Mathew Horne) and Fletch (James Corden) have just been dumped and fired respectively, and go hiking in a remote village to forget their troubles. Here they come across a bevy of European girls – presumably from the nation of Genericia – and a lesbian vampire curse. Low-rent mayhem ensues!

The horror elements not working here may have been forgivable. It's a horror comedy that puts the comedy first; a lot of films of the type get away with not being scary. They get away with it by being funny, though, which is the second-last adjective that could ever be applied to Lesbian Vampire Killers. The last is "good". The only way anyone could find this shit amusing would be if Zoo Weekly magazine is a little too subtle for their tastes.

Horne and Corden have been good elsewhere, but not here. Horne brings whiny neediness to heights never before reached in cinema, while Corden's lout is so unlikeable you pray for his death the second the wanders onscreen. The budget is clearly low, but that needn't mean the gore should be kept hidden like it is here. The violence level is high, yes, but for the most part, it happens just offscreen. The only bit of proper gore involves a vampire running around with an axe in her head, but the choreography is so bad of this little action that the moment is completely wasted.

The biggest crime of the film, perhaps, is that it can't even be enjoyed ironically. It's so bad, it's not even worthy of being laughed at. Despite all logic, the movie actually, in its own strange little way, takes itself seriously. The innumerable clichés in the film aren't even used to mock horror conventions; they're just there. It aims for the cult status reserved for Shaun of the Dead when it should be going for the cult status reserved for Uwe Boll or latter-day Shyamalan. It gets neither, existing in a black hole of jaw-gaping misery. (The film's other biggest crime is wasting its title, which could have been attached to a much more enjoyable film.)

There's a scene near the beginning where our two heroes first encounter the four European girls getting into their van. Wolfmother's Woman cranks up while the camera ogles their bodies. Halfway through the excruciating minute this bit lasts, the realisation comes: this is not supposed to be us laughing at these blokes and their reaction to these girls. This is for us, the audience. Our thoughts are not supposed to be "what idiots! They'll never have a chance, but it sure will be wacky to see them try!", but "titties titties boobies titties boobies titties boobs". The girls had good bodies, yes, but this is not an FHM shoot, it's a fucking movie, one that's supposed to be aiming for laughs. There's a perfectly good corner of the internet for that sort of thing, but if it's not funny, keep it out of the comedy. Lesbian Vampire Killers assumes its audience is as stupid as the film itself is.

There's a taboo with reviewing a movie after walking out. You haven't experienced the whole thing, so an honest score cannot be given. Lesbian Vampire Killers, then, is the exception proves to rule. Unless the rest of the film gave a step-by-step guide to ending world hunger, or contained a formula for curing cancer, or somehow actually brought the entire audience to climax, actually made them come where they sat, so they need to wipe up after, then it is of no use to anybody, ever. Apparently it contained a lot of Mathew Horne tied to a tree while James Corden runs around.

I rest my case.

1/10

Proper shit. I guess there's a minor blessing in that a non-franchise non-remake horror movie made general Australian cinema release, but it's still pretty unforgivable. If distributors want to give us a little horror comedy, then the bastards should release Drag Me to Hell.

In happier news, the Sydney Film Festival starts this week, and the line-up is pretty sexy. Not quite as sexy as the Melbourne International Film Festival's list so far – and they have more to announce – but it's a good-looking bunch of movies.