Glasgow Film Festival 2007: The Finale

Let's see, where was I... oh yeah, the rest of the films I saw in Glasgow. Sorry, this is a bit later than promised but hey, reporting on a festival I went to a month ago - that's not bad by my usual untimely standards.

Anyway, after sitting through all the horror on show on Saturday and no, that's not a reference to drunken Glaswegians (sorry, I think I made the same gag last year too), I had a more mainstream Sunday.

Sunday afternoon kicked off with Clint Eastwood's LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, not so much a sequel as a companion piece to his (only slightly) earlier movie FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. I was curious to see why this film had picked up the Oscar nominations for Clint rather than FLAGS and upon viewing it, I immediately saw why. It's simply a better film.

Concentrating on the same point in history as the earlier film, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA told of the same events as seen from the Japanese viewpoint. It would seem like a difficult task - not just the technical aspects, or filming it all in Japanese, or covering similar ground to a film that was only just out of the cinemas without repeating itself, but also the task of representing the views of the soldiers who are seen as being "the bad guys" in simple terms.

Eastwood pulls it off with aplomb. The battles are no less harrowing than they were in FLAGS (a film that is alluded to on a couple of occasions without it being required viewing beforehand) but it's the humanity that shines through. The Japanese cast, led by Ken Watanabe, do a grand job of portraying the soldiers with dignity, compassion and numerous other characteristics that older, more simplified movies would deny them.

From Cineworld I popped back along the road to the Glasgow Film Theatre to take in Richard Linklater's adaptation of the best-selling FAST FOOD NATION. The tactic of adapting a non-fiction book into dramatic fiction for the screen is an interesting one but one that doesn't quite pay off. There are too many characters with too many agendas - the message that fast food is a little dodgy comes across, but without any real focal point. On top of this, the harrowing footage of the slaughterhouse floor might be unpleasant enough but I couldn't help thinking that the people who are most likely to be offended by such bloody carnage are the ones who are least likely to be eating such food in the first place.

I finished that evening with BUENOS AIRES 1977, a thriller from Argentina about the mistreatment of political prisoners under the brutal regime in that country during the 1970s. The film concentrates mainly on the horrors that were sanctioned in the name of the Argentinean government but towards the end turns into an edge-of-the-seat thriller about the prisoners' escape attempt.

Based on a true story, this movie got my heart pumping as much as any recent Hollywood thriller and was a standout highlight of the Glasgow Film Festival this year. One can only hope that with this year marking the 25th anniversary of Britain's conflict with Argentina that films such as this one and the equally excellent (but under-released) BLESSED BY FIRE get the high profile they deserve.

If tense character-driven drama in enclosed spaces is your thing then you should probably stick with me, for the next film I saw (after returning from my previously-mentioned trip to Dublin) was TRUE NORTH, a low-budget drama which is predominantly Scottish on the surface but had a fair amount of Irish involvement too.

It's the story of a young Scotsman (SWEET SIXTEEN's Martin Compston) who, in an attempt to provide some financial security for his father, uses their fishing trawler to smuggler some Asian immigrants back to the UK. The drama on board unfolds mainly around the tension between members of the crew (also including Peter Mullan) but at the same time the film isn't afraid to tackle issues.

The successes of the film are many. For one thing, the cast are all excellent and, combined with an intelligent script, make a grand job not only of portraying the characters with all their problems but also in showing why people resort to such actions. While a lot of attention is focused on the plight of the immigrants, and justifiably so, it's easy to forget that the smugglers are human too and not always in it purely for exploitation purposes.

The sequences on the boat are standouts too, thanks to the fact that the film was actually shot at sea - too many films at sea are scuppered straight away by obvious studio sets so it's refreshing to see one done right.

And on top of all the other strengths, there's the ending. It's happy, in a manner of speaking - but you'll get punched in the gut a few times before you get to it.

This was followed by another trip from the GFT across town to the Grosvenor, for a late-night screening of SCOTT WALKER: 30 CENTURY MAN. It's exactly as it sounds - a documentary about Scott Walker, the sixties icon who found fame with the Walker Brothers (Fact: they weren't brothers, and none of them were really called Walker) and then went all weird. His music remains weird today but he's an incredible talent and an interesting guy, and this film is a rare insight into his history, his talent and his thoughts. The earlier portions of the film were more enjoyable to me but that may be because I'm more familiar with his earlier music; the film never stops being interesting though.

On the final day of Glasgow's festival, I took in three more at the GFT. First up was THE SHOOTIST, the final film in their John Wayne retrospective and also his final film.

When a once legendary gunslinger rolls into town to discover he's dying (played by a visibly ailing Wayne) he sets about trying to tidy up his life before he goes. In the boarding house where he stays, a young lad (Ron Howard) discovers who he is and idolises him, much to Wayne's chagrin as he wishes to leave the violent lifestyle behind. Unfortunately most of the town's inhabitants aren't as keen to forget.

It's hardly in the same league as THE SEARCHERS which, incredibly enough, is the only other Wayne film I've seen, but it's a decent western all the same. I'd be lying if I said Wayne put in an excellent performance but he does give the character a degree of warmth and humanity and most of all the sense that he really does know his time is up - not just his own life, but the very ideas he once represented. In that respect, it stands next to (but not quite on a par with) THE SEARCHERS, THE WILD BUNCH and the greatest western ever made, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, as a touching portrait of the death of the gun slinging way of life.

CLASH OF EGOS came next, which I think was a Danish movie but I can't remember and I'm too lazy to look it up. Its original title actually translates as "explosive bomb" which sounds daft but is actually perfect.

When a snobbish arthouse director is facing a serious lawsuit from an average joe with a temper problem, the settlement sees him partnering the lunatic in directorial and scripting duties, giving rise to a hilarious clash between pretentious arthouse sensibilities and a guy who just wants things to fight and explode. Poking fun at both ends of the cinematic spectrum, the film's a delight and comes highly recommended if you're in the mood for a laugh. Of course, the irony is that it will only play in arthouse cinemas here, if at all, but that's beyond my control.

And finally, the closing gala film.

First there was black and white. Then there was colour. Then there was Zhang Yimou. JU DOU, RAISE THE RED LANTERN, HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES... the Chinese director never fails to make films look beautiful but as breathtaking as all these are, nothing prepares you for the spectacle that is CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, getting its UK premiere on closing night of the GFF 2007.

The costumes and sets are so detailed they boggle the mind; the colours so wild and varied and vivid that it's a trick just for the human eye to take them all in; the battle scenes are as majestic as any committed to the screen - it's a visual feast in every sense imaginable.

That's not to say it's style over substance however - the story is a gripping tale of politics and betrayal in the family of a Chinese emperor, and boasts a cast headed by Gong Li and Chow Yun Fat, two megastars of Asian cinema, both of whom turn in terrific performances.

Because of the spectacle, the setting and the majestic and graceful fight scenes, the two Zhang Yimou films it will be compared to most often will be HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS. They were both excellent - and this movie surpasses them both.

It opens in UK cinemas in a couple of weeks. If you do not see it you are cheating yourself, and you deserve to be mocked openly in the street by small children. Do not let this one pass you by. And if you're only going to see it because I recommended it so highly (unlikely, I know) then feel free to thank me afterwards. Trust me, you'll want to.

I will try to get back to at least posting once a week now. Honest.

FrightFest: Glasgow Film Festival 2007

The FrightFest programming on the Saturday kicked off at lunchtime with a screening of THE TRIPPER, a throwback to 80s slasher movies directed by David Arquette. It's an affectionate homage to a much maligned genre and it positively glows with nostalgia; it also recreates the atmosphere and plot contrivances of a typical 80s slasher movie too, but remains tongue-in-cheek without being outright spoofery.

The plot, as with all such movies, is pretty simple. A bunch of youngsters head into the country for a music festival and end up falling foul of a mysterious killer who picks them off one by one. There are a few familiar faces in the cast - Jason Mewes of CLERKS fame plays himself as always, Arquette pops up in a cameo as a redneck and Paul "Pee-Wee Herman" Reubens puts in a hilarious turn as a music promoter.

The film is a riot from start to finish - mad, unadulterated fun with a decent helping of gore and violence (in a funny way, naturally) but the real star of the show is the premise of the killer himself. I don't want to say any more in case I spoil it, but let me just say it's very 80s, very political and very, very funny. HALLOWEEN was never like this. I've no idea when this is likely to hit cinemas, but when it does be sure to see it with a crowd for maximum enjoyment.

Maximum enjoyment is not a phrase likely to be associated with documentary/horror hybrid S&MAN (which is pronounced as "sandman" in case you're wondering). It follows a filmmaker's attempts to interview a young low-budget filmmaker who appears to be stalking victims and killing them before selling the videos to fans of extreme horror.

The film is dull from start to end, and the look at the kind of extreme, low-budget shockers being produce by the depraved minds of the horror underground just reminds me how little interest I have in them. I won't even mention the people responsible as I've no desire to spread the word about their work.

THE MESSENGERS is an American film, but from the Asian horror masters the Pang brothers. Unfortunately, this effort proves to be just as uninspired as the numerous American remakes of Asian horror have proven to be. I used to like Penelope Ann Miller so it's a shame to see her slumming it in a turkey like this - it's full of cliche and predictable "frights" (I use the term loosely) and can best be described as horror by numbers. I gather it was a number one at the American box office but frankly that just reflects the downside of the current interest in horror - that people after their horror fix will happily watch anything in the hope that it'll be the next SAW. This isn't. It's not even for adults.

TURISTAS (which, we were told by FrightFest honcho Alan Jones, will be released under the new title of PARADISE LOST) is another attempt at grabbing a piece of the HOSTEL market. Youngsters trekking through Brazil find a lovely, secluded beach, get up to all manner of drunken antics and then fall foul of a bloke who runs a secret organ-harvesting operation that likes to prey on tourists.

This film is another failure. For large parts of the film, we are expected to simply admire how good the young folk look in their swimming outfits on the beach, underwater, etc. When the horror starts, it's simply a pale imitation of the other similar films that have gone before. Ever since SAW and HOSTEL enjoyed the success they did, it seems horror consists of a person being rendered helpless and tortured in a supposedly shocking manner, preferably in a dimly-lit, dingy little room, before making their action-packed final-reel escape. Whoopee. I defy anyone with even a passing knowledge of horror to be surprised at who lives and who dies. I had it pegged from early on and I'd be surprised if nobody else did.

I've no doubt that when it's released it'll do some reasonable box office but it's not particularly demanding fair and even on the level of exploitation it's not a real winner.

Praise be then that we managed to finish the day with a brand new print of classic video nasty MOTEL HELL. This sleazy little effort is a hilarious (sometimes deliberately so, sometimes not) tale about a dirty little motel that makes a bit of money on the side from a rather unusual meat product.

It's totally barmy, it's bad taste, it's over the top, it's everything that was great about late 70s and early 80s nasties and, best of all, it's got Rory Calhoun wearing a pig's head while having a chainsaw battle with another equally-armed guy. If that isn't why cinema was invented, I don't know what is.

The rest of the films I saw at Glasgow this year will follow sometime next week...

A couple of days in Glasgow

At the same time as the Dublin International Film Festival (see previous entry) Glasgow was also hosting its latest film festival, and I managed to catch a few screenings at that too.

A patriotic sense of duty always means I always like to try and check out Scottish films whenever I can, and the first screening I took in at Glasgow's fest was the low-budget Scottish film FINDING BOB McARTHUR. It's a wistful but witty mockumentary reminiscing on the career of a fictional Scottish director who made it in Hollywood then disappeared, and is now being reluctantly brought back into the limelight to receive a lifetime achievement award.

The film mixes the memories of the man and his career, his friends and his family as we discover the toll taken on his life by his achievements and regrets. The film is full of ideas and has an admirable warmth about it, and also contains plenty for fans of old movies to admire (Michael Powell and Mitchell Leisen are clearly favourites). However...

Try as I might to find all that's good about it, there is no getting away from its shortcomings. It was made for next to nothing, which really shows. The clever integration of archive footage (from leading man Bob Edwards' own collection) is authentic enough, but the shot-on-video look ruins any chances of the reconstructed archive material coming anywhere close to it. Such scenes never look like anything other than someone at work with a camcorder in their back garden. On top of all that, the budget clearly didn't stretch to too many professional actors either - with the occasional exception (Edwards is acceptable) the acting is almost uniformly terrible, with dodgy accents and wooden delivery killing many scenes outright.

The film has to go down not so much as a flawed masterpiece but rather as an interesting failure.

Things picked up however when I left the GFT and made my way across town to the Grosvenor for a late night show of THE BOTHERSOME MAN, a dark but quirky and hilarious comedy from Iceland. A man arrives in a strange new city, where everything seems perfect... except people seem devoid of feeling, food has no taste, and no matter how much he drinks, alcohol has no effect. Then one day it all becomes too much and he decides to inflict a nasty injury on himself just to see what happens. Then it all gets weirder...

This is a terrific movie. I have no doubt that people will read all kinds of meanings into it - our obsession with trivial material objects, the importance of conforming, lack of political freedoms. It's all there if you're looking for it and if you're not, well, it's just a great fun ride.

It's not for those who want everything neatly wrapped up with one final recap of what's happened - those searching for a conventional ending or tidy explanations of what the city is will leave confounded. However, if you enter the movie not knowing what to expect and simply allow yourself to be swept up in its bizarre world, you are in for a treat. I spent the first fifteen minutes wondering what the hell was going on, but eventually I had totally bought into it (helped by likable performances from the cast). I left the cinema totally satisfied and I imagine most people will.

These two films were on the Friday night, while Saturday was taken up by horror films, as the FrightFest crew from London came into town and brought five new horror films with them. You might remember they did it for the first time last year and I wrote about that too. I'll do it again for this year's, but that may as well get an entry of its own. That'll probably be next week sometime.

In fact, I've run out of time and I'll be busy attending a bunch of other films over the next few days, so check back next week some time for the rest of my Glasgow write-up. Bye!

Dublin Film Festival 2007

As previously mentioned, I spent a bit of time at a couple of film festivals recently, namely Glasgow and Dublin. Both are fairly new in the world of film festivals but are certainly beginning to establish themselves. Today's ramble concerns my movie intake in Dublin.

The first film I was due to see was ALL THE LITTLE ANIMALS however it was cancelled so I decided to wander the streets of Dublin for a while before popping into the Irish Film Institute to see the re-release of arthouse classic BELLE DE JOUR. Well, it's described as a classic anyway. Personally, I thought it was exceptionally dull, lovely though Deneuve may have been in the title role.

The first film I saw as part of the festival therefore was HALF NELSON. It's probably not one that I'd have normally gone out of my way to see but felt I should on this occasion since Ryan Gosling had picked up an Oscar nomination for his lead performance. You know me, I've got to try and check out as many of the Oscar contenders as possible.

Gosling plays a teacher with a drug problem in a school in a poor neighbourhood. Normally you'd think it's another of those inner city poor kids being shown the way by the loving teacher, etc. and you'd be forgiven since that's pretty much a staple of these movies when Hollywood churns them out. This low-budget number is a surprise however - the teacher also coaches basketball for example, and yet the old cliche of the misunderstood pupil scoring the winning basket in the last second of the game is never trotted out. The film subverts all expectations of the genre and actually makes the idea seem fresh. No mean feat after the number of times the formula has been used.

The following day began with a screening of the late-80s political thriller MELANCHOLIA, a post cold war suspense film that offers little suspense or thrills. As a mood piece it certainly lives up to the title but it's a drag of a movie.

Things improved a little with a screening of MERRY CHRISTMAS MR LAWRENCE, but I didn't find this film nearly as impressive as its reputation suggests. There's a lot of over-wrought amateur dramatics on display from all the cast members, the non-English speaking members of the cast struggle with their English lines, there's some really bad dubbing and some of the fight scenes look incredibly false. Despite all this, it's not actually that bad a film.

The first real gem came with the screening of Zhang Yimou's RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES. Although Chinese, the film is shot mainly in Japanese and concerns the efforts of an old man to make up with his dying son by travelling thousands of miles to film an opera. Trust me, it makes sense.

The film is a world away from Zhang's usual epic sword-fighting period pieces (HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS and the forthcoming CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER) but is still shot on an epic, breathtaking canvas. It gets its UK premiere as part of this month's Cinema China season at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh and will be touring the UK - you really should check it out.

The evening finished with RESCUE DAWN, the new film by Werner Herzog. The acclaimed documentary filmmaker had already given this film the documentary treatment, but here he returns to the story as a dramatic movie, with Christian Bale this time taking on the role of Dieter Dengler, a German-American pilot who was shot down and captured behind enemy lines in the Vietnam conflict and began to hatch an escape attempt.

There are some surprisingly bad special effects near the start and end of the movie but Herzog makes up for that with some of the most stunning jungle photography I've ever seen. That, added to the gripping true story and strong leads by the cast, especially Bale, make this movie a must see. I believe it's due to hit UK cinemas in April.

The first documentary I saw while in Dublin was LOST CHILDREN, a haunting portrait of the lives of children in Uganda who had been used as child soldiers by the rebel army. While some kids are happy to escape, it seems like some miss the life they had as a soldier. It's doesn't make for the happiest of stories, but it's a fascinating insight into one of the darker sides of the conflicts in Africa and presents a fairly balanced picture of the horror and despair as well as some hope for the future.

SMALL ENGINE REPAIR was the next real highlight for me. Although set somewhere in Northern Ireland, the location is pretty ambiguous (we never really see anything except forest and a few buildings) and, with its combination of country music, rugged men who spend all their time drinking, working and fighting, and the undercurrent of hostility, betrayal and revenge, it feels more like a modern-day western. It's not all grim though, as this tale of an aspiring middle-aged country singer offers hope, humour and reconciliation in abundance. I only hope it actually gets rewarded with a deserved UK theatrical release.

CATCH A FIRE is another interesting effort. Tim Robbins stars in this story set in apartheid-era South Africa, as an agent determined to crack down on the so-called terrorists of the ANC. The movie, directed by Philip Noyce, is a passable thriller and a gripping insight into the troubled South Africa but functions best as a mirror of today's society, taking a good look at why young law-abiding men would be driven to joining "terrorist" organisations.

Tim Robbins also stars, along with darling of the indie film Sarah Polley, in THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS, a low-budget movie about a former Balkan refugee (Polley) who gets a job on an oilrig tending to Robbins, who has been seriously injured in a fire. Love blossoms, but the horrors in the young deaf girl's previous life make it difficult for her to relate to anyone. The film is a small-scale intimate effort that feels not unlike something Lars Von Trier might have come up with (aside from the oilrig setting, it has a similar feel to BREAKING THE WAVES) but isn't afraid to look at big issues.

The next film was another highlight. The makers of 2:37 must surely have seen Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT as the similarities are more than superficial - an over-the-shoulder camera prowls a high school showing overlapping scenes from the lives of the students in the build-up to a tragic event.

2:37 however, takes a slightly more cinematic approach and breaks up the fly-on-the-wall look with sporadic interviews with the pupils. The plot begins with the discovery of a pupil's suicide. We then rewind to the start of the day and follow each of the students, learning of their problems and issues, as the film tries to keep us guessing who it is that finally takes their own life.

While there are some cliched aspects of the story (guess what, one of the homophobic jocks turns out to be a closet gay), the film makes a good job of incorporating a lot of teenage problems and is aided by terrific turns by the largely unknown cast of youngsters. It could be said that there is a lot of misdirection involved in pointing to the eventual victim, but in hindsight there was actually a major clue, which I won't list here for fear of spoiling the film. Let me just say that while the film owes a huge debt to ELEPHANT (which employed the same technique in the build-up to a Columbine-style massacre) I actually thought this film was better. The ending is both achingly tragic and difficult to watch, but it's a rewarding experience, which I urge anyone to seek out if they get the chance.

When funding fell apart for a movie that European cinema legend Wim Wenders was working on, he quickly put together this low-budget quickie about a slightly unhinged Vietnam vet who prowls the streets of LA watching for terrorist activity, and the girl who comes back to America to find him, being his only living relative. It's shot on video and looks pretty cheap but it's a haunting movie about the state of America in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It's one of those films that didn't really register with me when I first watched it but played on my mind a lot afterwards. Whether you'll get much of an opportunity to see it remains to be seen - it was made in 2004 and has not been seen until this year.

The next documentary I saw was GHOSTS OF CITE SOLEIL, about gang warfare and political misbehaviour among the streets of the ghetto in Haiti that the UN has described as the most dangerous place on Earth. It's an incredible view of a country in chaos and one wonders how the filmmakers managed to piece it together without being killed themselves. Fascinating though it is, it tends to wander a bit and doesn't really focus on any one issue or character long enough to build up momentum. Instead, it ends up a montage of gruelling an unpleasant imagery and situations which just leaves you feeling a bit miserable and, at the same time, thankful.

My time at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2007 came to a close with one classic and one last documentary.

After a delightful burger in the IFI's bar, I headed up the stairs to take in the original version of THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. I love a good heist movie and this is certainly that; large parts in the middle of the film are heist-free and taken up with Steve McQueen's attempts to outfox Faye Dunaway, the insurance investigator determined to prove him guilty of the opening heist while falling slowly in love with him. When there's no crime caper going on, the chemistry between the two leads is enough to keep the film ticking over. And I just love the split-screen look.

Lastly, just before hopping on the bus back to the airport, I took in WHY WE FIGHT, Eugene Jarecki's documentary about America's war in Iraq, its history of wars in foreign lands and how warnings delivered by Eisenhower as he departed office have been totally ignored in the years since. The documentary seems to be driving at the fact that military might has governed a lot of US policy and lifestyle but it drifts about between topics and interviewees to the point where it's difficult to remember what the film's talking about. It's full of fascinating interviews and footage, to be sure - but when the titles roll it's difficult to say just what you've learned.

That's all for now. Still to come is my roundup of the Glasgow Film Festival, but first I just have to say that as much as I enjoyed my time in Dublin and at the various cinemas there, I can't finish without mentioning the pre-screening music in the auditoria of the Screen Cinema. Dear God, the music... if you've ever heard Boney M's cover version of "King of the Road" and thought it couldn't get any worse, think again. The Screen seems to have unearthed a version that sounds like a 13-year-old was playing it on a £30 synthesiser. Nice cinema though.