Capsule Reviews are by the following: Andy Palmer (AP), Basil Lawrence (BL), Brannavan Gnanalingam (BG), Caleb Starrenburg (CS), Catherine Bisley (CB), Darren Bevan (DB), David Levinson (DL), Jacob Powell (JP), Joe Sheppard (JS), Kate Blackhurst (KB), Melody Nixon (MN), Nina Fowler (NF), Roseanne Liang (RL), Steve Garden (SG), Thomasin Sleigh (TS), Tim Wong (TW).

Animation Now!
Various/2008 | Animation Now » [Full Review A] [B]
Innovation within a traditional framework is alive and well in this year’s selection, with everything from blue painted blobs to an extraordinary live action/puppet hybrid used to sublime effect in this year’s Oscar-nominated finale piece, Madame Tutli-Putli.—RL

Anvil! The Story of Anvil
Sacha Gervasi/USA/2007 | Music » [Full Review]
A failed, ageing heavy metal band get a second shot at rock immortality. “Both sublime and ridiculous, and rather sad in so many ways”—AP

Apron Strings
Sima Urale/NZ/2008 | Centrepiece » [Full Review]
Temperatures flare on a bustling Otahuhu street where a curry house and a Vietnamese bakery sit alongside an old-fashioned boutique specialising in wedding cakes. Urale directs with local flavour. “Juicy, well-prepared and ultimately satisfying.”—JS

The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins
Pietra Brettkelly/NZ/2008 | Portrait of the Artist » [Full Review]
Artist Vanessa Beecroft, in Sudan photographing her latest body of work, attempts to adopt Sudanese ‘orphan’ twins. “Intelligently paced and edited... Brettkelly does not try to over-simplify the story but instead manages to show that Beecroft is a complicated person and these are complicated issues... in her opened ended and fluid style she offers the audience the opportunity to give these controversial and pertinent issues the consideration they deserve.”—TS

Be Kind Rewind
Michel Gondry/USA/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Michel Gondry’s ode to grassroots filmmaking and community spirit finds Jack Black and Mos Def reshooting the entire VHS catalogue of a endanderged video store. “Gondry’s inventive direction and eye for detail during scenes of pastiche shows a childish glee for the nuances of 80s and 90s movies.”—DB

Bigger, Stronger, Faster*
Christopher Bell/USA/2008 | Framing Reality » [Full Review A] [B]
The game is rigged according to Bell, who airs America’s dirty linen by way of its history in anabolic steroid use and performance enhancing drugs. “Far too overreaching to claim itself as a definitive or even cogent documentary on the subject... Yet as a morality play, this one-man odyssey is an engaging three-act: Bell’s internal conflict a monologue central to the documentary’s lack of surety.”—TW

Boy A
John Crowley/UK/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
Crime and punishment figures in Crowley’s (Intermission) sophomore film, about a young man emerging from an entire adolescence spent behind bars. “Well thought out and sensitively played... a meditation on the formation of identity which does a nice job of opening up some dark, uneasy issues that deserve to be thought about.”—JP

Caramel
Nadine Labaki/Lebanon/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
“Labaki’s debut feature is candid and charming. The plot is standard romantic comedy; the film as a whole a dusty, beautiful sweep of the lives of women in Beirut... Where Caramel gets interesting is the intersection of these rom-com cliches with the reality of everyday life in Lebanon. Easy to identify with relationship and work troubles, less easy to relate to an armed soldier tapping on the window of your car.”—NF

CJ7
Stephen Chow/Hong Kong/China/2008 | For All Ages » [Full Review]
An impoverished boy befriends an adorable alien with surprise powers in Chow’s wonderous extraterrestrial fable. “There are clearly a lot of cultural differences – smacking children and torturing pets don’t go down so well in Aotearoa – but this is exactly the sort of film I wish they had shown us during AV time in Standard 3.”—JS

A Complete History of My Sexual Failures
Chris Waitt/UK/2008 | New Directions » [Full Review]
When filmmaker Waitt is dumped with no explanation, he decides to track down and interview his cavalcade of former girlfriends to learn why his romantic-life is so spectacularly unsuccessful. “Too staged to ring entirely true; yet Waitt is such an endearingly self-effacing character it ultimately doesn’t matter. A clever and compelling exercise in humiliation-comedy.”—CS

The Counterfeiters
Stefan Ruzowitzky/Germany/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
“A new take on old subject matter, The Counterfeiters breathes fresh life into many of the worn themes and clichés of the Second World War and the Holocaust, exposing ironies at every turn.”—JS

Dear Zachary
Kurt Kuenne/USA/2007 | Incredibly Strange Film Festival » [Full Review]
“Comments regarding the raw emotive impact of this documentary tale are not exaggerated; the film is as wildly unpredictable and wide ranging in its emotional tone.”—JP

Derek
Isaac Julien/UK/2008 | Portrait of the Artist » [Full Review]
Tilda Swinton recites passages from her Derek Jarman memorial ‘Letter to an Angel’ in this enlightening artist portrait comprised of extracts from a candid 1991 interview, and clips from the iconoclastic director’s 8mm archive and feature film oeuvre. “Julien’s synthesis of the Jarman legacy benefits from clarity, dignity, and quiet worship... a timely refresher given the re-emergence of Todd Haynes; the gay filmmaker’s breakthrough Poison very much Jarman-esque, and debt owning.”—TW

The Duchess of Langeais
Jacques Rivette/France/2007 | Masters » [Full Review]
Rivette’s (Celine & Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse) latest, an intensely acted Balzac adaptation. “A mischievous film underneath all its intensity – a film that I’d have passed off as lesser Rivette if it hadn’t brooded with me for days afterwards. Even when he moves at a faster pace, the old master knows what he’s doing.”—BG

Eat, for This is My Body
Michelange Quay/Haiti/France/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
Conceptual, anachronistic mood piece set in post-colonial Haiti, staged across a series of surreal, strikingly rendered episodes. “Pitched somewhere between anthropology and a Matthew Barney film... Quay’s waking dream occasionally gives rise to the sublime, making the most of its scorched Haitian topography: a landscape claimed by swollen shantytowns and restless human wildlife.”—TW

Elite Squad
Jose Padilha/Brazil/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
“A kind of antidote for the youthful hope and retro-chic of the immensely successful City of God. Again the subject matter is chiefly the favelas or slums of Rio de Janeiro, but Padilha highlights here the brutality of the special forces unit ‘waging war’ against the druglords and exposes the endemic corruption of the ordinary fuzz, whose top brass runs protection racquets much like the mafia.”—JS

The Escapist
Rupert Wyatt/UK/Ireland/2008 | New Directions » [Full Review]
Brian Cox and friends hatch a thrilling prison break. “Trading heavily on most of the prison movie clichés, The Escapist is not bringing anything new to the genre, however Wyatt and co. do manage to achieve moments of depth and beauty that stand out and lift the film enough to make it worth seeing.”—JP

Fighter
Natasha Arthy/Denmark/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Less Women’s Studies and more The Next Karate Kid meets Bend It Like Beckman, Fighter continues on the ‘girls can do anything’ riff with a classic inter-generational immigrant drama. “Just when you’re about to dismiss this movie as naďve and predictable, it surprises with unexpected flourishes of brilliance.”—RL

Flight of the Red Balloon
Hou Hsiao-hsien/France/Taiwan/2007 | Masters » [Full Review A] [B]
Simply majestic. Commissioned by Paris’ Musée D’Orsay and an homage to Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon, Hou’s first picture in Europe centres on a chaotic, confused, charming Juliette Binoche, her young son, and Taiwanese film student nanny. “One of those rare films... a masterpiece by one of cinema’s great filmmakers... the intricate rhythms of daily life captured in a way that leaves you speechless.”—BG

Frontier(s)
Xavier Gens/France/2007 | Incredibly Strange Film Festival » [Full Review]
“Not a film for the faint-of-stomach, Gens’ recent addition to the growing Gallic-Horror genre... throws personal atrocities at the viewer in fast and furious succession creating, after the obligatory 20-minute plot setup, an almost non-stop bloodbath of genre clichés.”—JP

A Gentle Breeze in the Village
Yamashita Nobuhiro/Japan/2007 | Masters » [Full Review]
Yamashita, possibly the most astute and interesting director working in Japan today, returns with a wryly observant and perfectly pitched coming-of-age drama. “A rich and infectiously charming celebration of youth... Simply put... a joy to watch.”—CS

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
Alex Gibney/USA/2007 | Portrait of the Artist » [Full Review]
Examining the bull-in-China-shop literary output of a mythical and rabble-rousing American journalist, Gibney forms a fractured overview of Thompson’s enigmatic life – and like his writing looks between the lines to sort fact from fiction. “Watching Gonzo, it’s hard to like Thompson much: an eternally drunk, abusive and self-indulgent caricature. It’s even harder not to be dazzled by the insight and beauty of his genre-defining journalism.”—CS

Great Australian Albums: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Murder Ballads
Larry Meltzer/Australia/2008 | Music » [Full Review]
“A retrospective look at 1996’s album Murder Ballads song by gory song, promised an interesting window onto a breakthrough moment in Cave’s eclectic career. The film ultimately failed to come together as a fully coherent and focussed making-of story, but the more general interviews, largely with former collaborators and music journalists, proved to be nonetheless revealing for Cave fans.”—JS

Homegrown
Various/NZ/2008 | New Directions » [Full Review]
The NZIFF’s annual short film programme. “2008 proves to be another year stock full of promising shorts from New Zealand directors. This year’s programme maintains the high level of work which 2007 saw come through, with perhaps a broader spread thematic coverage and production style.”—JP

The Hollow Men
Alister Barry/NZ/2008 | Framing Reality » [Full Review A] [B]
One part comedy, two parts horror, Nicky Hager’s controversial expose takes to the big screen. “Viewers who have developed an allergy to the political documentary genre in recent years need not fear: veteran documentary maker Alister Barry (Someone Else’s Country, In a Land of Plenty) has created a visually stimulating adaptation of Hager’s book without lapsing into sensationalism a la Michael Moore.”—NF

Hunger
Steve McQueen/UK/2008 | New Directions » [Full Review A] [B]
Lending a savage intimacy to the spirit of Bobby Sands – the IRA radical who spearheaded the Irish prison-strikes of 1981 – McQueen’s Camera d’Or winner displays a fearless commitment to the verité of prison life. “A no-holds-barred immersion in human suffering.”—DL

I Just Didn’t Do It
Masayuki Suo/Japan/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
A nightmarish scenario about a wrongly accused man subjected to Japan’s draconian legal system, Suo’s allegorical black hole is described as “Kafkaesque”, though has more in commong with the dysfunctional institutions of David Simon’s The Wire. “An airtight courtroom drama austerely photographed and fastidiously edited, the film is sophisticated in its genre routine. Riveting... somber, and deeply critical.”—TW

In Bruges
Martin McDonagh/UK/Belgium/2008 | New Directions » [Full Review]
“Seasoned playwright Martin McDonagh’s debut feature is a slyly humorous quasi-fable with several layers of moral subtext and a canny eye for the latent tragedy and sadness lurking beneath many comic situations... All in all, this is a much more complex film than it initially seems, showing plenty of promise for McDonagh’s filmic future.”—BL

In Search of a Midnight Kiss*
Alex Holdridge/USA/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
A romantic comedy light on production gloss and heavy on naturalistic dialogue, Holdridge’s third feature, about a hapless twenty-something’s blind date on New Year’s Eve, pushes most of the right buttons. “A low-fi character drama set firmly in the everyday, with believable but affecting romance.”—JP

In the City of Sylvia
José Luis Guerin/Spain/France/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
In a fantasy Euro-locale – all sun-glinted cobblestone and historic facades – a dreary-eyed bohemian pursues a beautiful woman through the unmarked streets. “While hardly the first to twin the creative impulse with the libidinous one, there’s a method to Guerín’s horniness that rises above hat-tipping the ‘gaze’ in order to scope out girls: Striking an impossible balance between irony and wonder, he transmutes the raw base of his lead’s quest into a meditation on the act of creation.”—DL

Jar City
Baltasar Kormákur/Iceland/2006 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Bleak, forboding Reykjavik thriller, based on a controversial crime novel about the sharing of genomic and medical data, paired in this film with the grim mundanities of detective work. “A welcome addition to the more intelligent crime dramas we’ve seen recently, and one with plot twists you’ll have to pay attention to throughout.”—DB

The King of Kong
Seth Gordon/USA/2007 | Incredibly Strange Film Festival » [Full Review A] [B]
Two wizards of coin-op classic Donkey Kong battle for high score glory. “Sure enough, the documentary manipulates its footage to exaggerate the rivalry... yet in the finest sporting tradition, compels you to root for the underdog cliché – a nothing if not entertaining conceit.”—TW

La France*
Serge Bozon/France/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
The androgynous, unorthodox Sylvie Testud poses as man to join a legion of inglorious French troops in this subversive left-of-field war musical. “A strange delicacy among war movies... its willowy night-time sequences some of the most entrancing ever lit.”—TW

Let the Right One In
Tomas Alfredson/Sweden/2008 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Could this be the best vampire movie since Near Dark or Werner Herzog’s remake of the classic Noseferatu? Directed by Sweden’s Alfredson, Let the Right One In defies simple genre description, combing vampire horror with strong elements of social realist drama, coming-of-age romance, and psychological thriller to create a film that is complex, layered, and broader in range than its “vampire movie” trappings might at first suggest.—JP

Lorna’s Silence
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne/Belgium/France/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
The Dardennes Brothers’ latest. “As played by newcomer Dobroshi, Lorna is a pleasure to behold – magnetically shuffling between open vulnerability and devout resilience. But the Dardennes’ ascent into a delusional spiritualism feels off.”—DL

Lou Reed’s Berlin
Julian Schnabel/USA/2007 | Music » [Full Review]
“The communist-era decadence and revolution that the original record connoted might be lacking in a contemporary American setting, but in reviving Berlin Reed has redeemed the obscure follow-up to the smash hit Transformer after thirty-five years in the wilderness, unveiling an epic experience to match the complex concept and narrative that the album was founded on.”—JS

The Man From London
Béla Tarr/Hungary/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
A dockside noir concerning a suitcase of money, and the Englishman hot on its trail, Béla Tarr’s first film since Werckmeister Harmonies is a masterclass in slow-burn formalism, dense with “opaque images, prowling tracking shots, and eventful scene cuts.”—TW

Man on Wire
James Marsh/UK/2007 | Opening Night » [Full Review]
Philippe Petit recalls his “artistic crime of the century”, an illegal tightrope walk between New York’s Twin Towers in 1974. “The film’s lack of context... might jar a little too for the cynics... That said, this is entertaining stuff, the build-up works like a thriller, and it’s hard not to savour Petit’s enthusiasm in recounting the day he reached the peak of his craft.”—BG

Max & Co
Samuel & Frédéric Guillaume/Switzerland/2007 | For All Ages » [Full Review]
Max, a stop-motion animated fox, sets out to find his father, a famous troubador by the name of Jonny Bigoude, in this lively, gothic Swiss animation. “Directors Frederic and Samuel... have really brought this fable of greed and identity alive with the puppetry of all the main characters... while the details of the background are intricate and beautifully capture the raison d’etre of so many French towns and villages.”—DB

My Winnipeg
Guy Maddin/Canada/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review A] [B]
An impassioned, unauthorized history of Winnipeg, Guy Maddin’s hometown phantasmagoria is a documentary within inverted commas. “Hilarious... an outrageous documentary tease, the Canadian’s most hysterical film to date.”—TW

Night and Day
Hong Sang-soo/Korea/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Male/female relations are sized up brilliantly in Hong’s Parisian sojourn. “Truly wonderful, a sharp, hilarious take on relationships and loneliness... a deceptively “small” masterpiece that is much more complex than it looks.”—BG

Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037
Ben Niles/USA/2007 | Music » [Full Review]
Chronicle of the yearlong assemblage of Steinway ‘L1037’, and its multi-ethnic, blue collar factory employees who interdependently hand-craft grand pianos. “After viewing this down-to-earth documentary... it would be difficult to ignore the intricate artistry that goes into making what, musically-speaking, is much more than the sum of its parts.”—BL

One Hundred Nails
Ermanno Olmi/Italy/2007 | Masters » [Full Review]
The latest – and apparently last – film from the master of the The Tree of Wooden Clogs. “By turns witty, insightful and mystical... Olmi’s characters openly invite us to interpret each plot development as biblical allegory, but since the director himself has proclaimed this his final work, it is tempting – if a little romantic or bold – to interpret the protagonist’s renunciation of scholarship as a kind of grandiose and autobiographical statement from a retiring ‘Master’.”—JS

The Order of Myths
Margaret Brown/USA/2008 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
Documentarian Brown (Be Here To Love Me) heads further south to her ancestral home in Mobile, Alabama, for the 2007 Mardi Gras, where a fortnight of parades, debutante balls, and ‘Mystic Societies’ are racially segregated, culminating in dual carnivals and twin coronations.—JS

The Orphanage
Juan Antonio Bayona/Spain/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Bayona’s accomplished first feature follows the story of a woman who earmarks a large estate as a home for disabled children, unaware of its malevolent inhabitants and supernatural forces. “A pleasingly rendered and utterly sufficient horror film – the perfect date movie. For the picky ones, it is a disappointing addition to a tired genre that is desperately in need of a resurrection.”—RL

Paris
Cédric Klapisch/France/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Klapisch’s (The Spanish Apartment) cinematic tourist brochure, a heart-warming exploration of the lives, loves and neighbourhoods of Paris. “Duris is there to act as the film’s glue, pulling the picture back together whenever it threatens to fall apart. Admittedly lighthearted... none-the-less an engaging and satisfying ode to the City of Lights and Love.”—CS

Patti Smith: Dream of Life
Steven Sebring/USA/2008 | Music » [Full Review]
The poet princess is extolled through an eclectic and contemplative assemblage of events, revealing more about Smith’s life and music than a usual chronological portrayal often does. “Dream of Life doesn’t attempt to... draw any heavy-handed conclusions, but instead depicts Smith as a complicated and introspective person wandering through her life and attempting to make sense of it.”—TS

Persepolis
Satrapi/Paronnaud/France/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes last year, Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel of life between France and Tehran is an engaging animated memoir. “An accomplished, accessible and utterly unique film... at its heart a story so simple and familiar to any audience that it’s easy to forget all about its formal innovation or ambitious scope and just have a blast.”—JS

Pop Skull
Adam Wingard/USA/2007 | Incredibly Strange Film Festival » [Interview]
“Pop Skull is a film made by a filmmaker with no inhibitions: psychedelic visuals, dissonant soundtracks and frequent tonal shifts. It’s the type of film that will win over indie and horror fans, and Wingard in co-writing, co-producing, shooting, lighting, directing and editing the film, seems to typify the possibility that digital filmmaking has allowed.”—BG

The Return
Kathy Dudding/NZ/2008 | New Directions » [Interview]
A lovely evocation, shot through the memories of Dudding’s grandmother who arrived on a boat from England at the age of three, archival footage of the city, and her own searching eye that gleans for the quirky and too often-ignored parts of Wellington. “It’s a beautiful wee film, a very personal and moving ode to a city, and an intimate memory cache.”—BG

The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
Eric Rohmer/France/2007 | Masters » [Full Review]
“Taking the form of a pastoral romance... this is another of Rohmer’s wry meditations on the intricacies of love, replete with philosophical ruminations on morality, fidelity and the temptations of hedonism... As relaxed and sensual as a warm summer’s evening, the film is as insightful as anything in Rohmer’s oeuvre, and those willing to suspend disbelief and delve beneath its surface charms will be richly rewarded.”—SG

Rubbings From a Live Man
Florian Habicht/NZ/2008 | Portrait of the Artist » [Full Review]
This dramatised documentary from filmmaker/artist Habicht fuses straightforward interview footage with filmed, theatre style ‘reenactments’ and dramatic monologues to tell something akin to the life story of its subject: prolific thespian and creative tour de force, Warwick Broadhead.—JP

Secret Sunshine
Lee Chang-dong/Korea/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
A Korean vanguard returns – 2002’s remarkable Oasis, Lee’s last outing prior to becoming Minister of Culture, remains among the best films of the decade. Jeon Do-yeon, who claimed Best Actress at Cannes for her exhausting performance, hits all the right notes as a tragedy-striken widow, with the splendid Song Kang-ho in intriguing support. “Anything but muted... possesses a violent, anguished soul. Like all Lee Chang-dong films... it emits light in the strangest of places, and is grounded in a hopeful, human reality.”—TW

Shadow of the Holy Book
Arto Halonen/Finland/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
“The so-called ‘holy book’ filmmakers Halonen and Frazier explore in this rough, patchy documentary is the ‘Ruhnama;’ a hysterical and exploitative work put together by former Turkmenistan dictator Saparmurat Niyazov... In uncovering what could perhaps be the most esoteric of all subjects in geopolitics, Halonen and Frazier manage to successfully bring to light the intentions, consequences and – ever present in contemporary exposé docos – the multi-national corporate links behind the Ruhnama.”—MN

Sharkwater
Rob Stewart/Canada/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
“Sharkwater exposes shark finning as a cruel and wasteful practice. It threatens a species that has been around for millions of years with extinction.”—CB

Somers Town
Shane Meadows/UK/2008 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Delightful, casual buddy movie couched in Shane Meadows’ fondness for adolescent relations, centred on This is England’s Thomas Turgoose as a midlands runaway who befriends a lonely Polish teen in North London. “Just when you think Meadows is about to lurch the story towards violence, he refrains, forgoing tragic consequence for ecstatic wish fulfillment. Shot in unobtrusive black and white, the film’s modesty is its biggest charm.”—TW

Son of a Lion
Benjamin Gilmour/Australia/Pakistan/2007 | New Directions » [Interview]
“By using non-actors who collaborated on the script, and filming on the fly under the nose of the Pakistani authorities, the film has a rare authenticity. Importantly, Gilmour manages to give voice to a much maligned group in the Western world. The film’s focus is the people, not the stunning landscape because as Gilmour says “we know the landscape, we don’t know the people.””—BG

A Song of Good
Gregory King/NZ/2008 | New Directions » [Interview]
“King made a bit of a splash with 2003’s Christmas. Scabrous, sharp and potent, it was one of the better local releases for a long time... It’s taken a while for King’s follow-up, A Song of Good to appear. The film charts a similar terrain in terms of messed-up families, but A Song of Good is more about movement, about redemption, about power and powerlessness.”—BG

Standard Operating Procedure
Errol Morris/USA/2008 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
“Four years after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, Errol Morris gives a comprehensive insight into how the infamous photos were taken, what they showed, and how judgement was passed on those responsible. While his intent is admirable and composition flawless, I wish the visuals had been left to speak for themselves.”—NF

Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains
Gonzalo Arijon/France/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
“This extraordinary story of human endurance is relived through a combination of naturalistically set interviews with survivors... and verite-styled reconstruction of events... a film full of dignity and perseverant hope, providing a much-needed antidote to sinsationalised media portrayals of tragic circumstances.”—BL

Sukiyaki Western Django
Takashi Miike/Japan/2007 | Incredibly Strange Film Festival » [Full Review]
East-meets-West genre-bender sees Miike combine Django, El Topo, and a Yojimbo-Fist Full of Dollars-esque plot about a mysterious gunslinger caught in the middle of a small town’s battle over a gold-mine. “The maverick director’s latest entry... might easily be his most accessible to date... not least of which because it features a delightfully unconvincing cameo by Quentin Tarantino, and a Japanese cast delivering lines in phonetically pronounced (although mostly unintelligible) English.”—CS

Teeth
Mitchell Lichtenstein/USA/2007 | Incredibly Strange Film Festival » [Full Review]
Vagina dentata rules in this squirmy coming-of-age fable. “Lichtenstein overcomes predictability with a perfect pitch of creeping humour, inspired lead casting and shrewd navigation of feminist theory and horror subtext.”—RL

Three Monkeys
Nuri Bilge Ceylan/Turkey/2008 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
The forthright and dramatic new film from Turkish master Ceylan concerns a politician who persuades his driver to take the blame (and a period of imprisonment) for an accident, and the subsequent suspicion, guilt, fear and disgust permeating the claustrophobic world of his traumatised family. “The more one thinks about this dark, noir-tinged tale, the more compassionate and relevant it becomes.”—SG

Timecrimes
Nacho Vigalondo/Spain/2007 | Incredibly Strange Film Festival » [Full Review A] [B]
“Though full of the usual holes to pick at... Timecrimes is possessed of enough verve and mind-fuck twistedness to keep these thoughts at bay. More B-Grade in feel than arthouse, the film manages to explore some of the unavoidable quandaries that the notion of time travel presents without taking itself too seriously... or falling prey to any pretentiousness.”—JP

To Each His Own Cinema
Various/France/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review A] [B]
Commissioned by Cannes, thirty-six auteurs reflect on cinema and cinema going. “You’ll come away from the experience feeling invigorated about movie going.”—JP

Up the Yangtze
Yung Chang/Canada/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review] [Interview]
Following the path of the Yangtze “farewell tour” boat cruises, Chang humanises the impossible-to-comprehend numbers with his cast of polite and sometimes patronising Western tourists, and two young cruise staff recruits – spoilt uber-capitalist-in-training “Jerry” Chen Bo Yu, and impoverished middle-school graduate, “Cindy” Yu Shui. “In the shadow of one of China’s greatest triumphs, it is enduring humanity – both of the filmmaker, and the family who came to call him ‘big brother’ – that outclasses it.”—RL

Useless
Jia Zhang-ke/China/Hong Kong/2007 | Framing Reality » [Full Review]
“China’s industrialisation-on-steroids throws up such a rich and complex tangle of issues that it could fill an entire festival of documentaries... Useless continues in that vein, with fly-on-the-wall observations of three varied corners of China’s garment industry: workers in a large-scale production line factory; a designer who rallies against the mass-machine-production of clothes...; and finally the simple life of increasingly out-of-work tailors in small town Fengdang.”—RL

Vexille
Sori/Japan/2007 | Animation Now » [Full Review]
The animators behind Appleseed conjure an exhaustive collection of science-fiction plots, scrambled through the mind of a robot, and spat out the other side onto a Paul Okenfold soundtrack. “This is film that seeks to push the boundaries of animation... striving for a highly stylised vision of the future.”—CS

Vogelfrei
Various/Latvia/2007 | New Directions » [Full Review]
Centred on a single character at different stages in his life, this portmanteau film by four young Latvian directors demonstrates that a unified approach and carefully plotted narrative can allow a multi-directed project to work structurally and thematically. “Beautiful filmmaking, each story told with a compelling visual and narrative sense.”—BG

Waltz with Bashir
Ari Folman/Israel/2008 | Closing Night » [Full Review A] [B]
“Taking its title from a surreal scene in which an Israeli soldier, under heavy fire, enters into a trance-like dance in the middle of a street junction in Beirut under the shadow of several massive posters of Bashir Gemayel... Folman’s Waltz with Bashir is at once a surreal journey into lost memory and an incredibly sobering documentary of the first degree.”—JP

Water Lilies
Celine Sciamma/France/2008 | New Directions » [Full Review A] [B]
Newcomer Sciamma directs an adolescent love quadrangle amidst the world of synchronised swimming. “The distinctions between the have and have-nots, the ugly and the pretty, the ones who will be successes and the ones who will be wallpaper are depicted with a beady, atmospheric eye. More vividly, the film captures the fantasies, the vulnerabilities, and the pitiless realities of growing up.”—BG

The Wave
Dennis Gansel/Germany/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
“The Wave is about as delicate and subtle as a blacksmith’s forge. But the hammer-and-tongs obviousness of the plot, themes and characters is kind of the point, and the revolutionary ideals, youth design aesthetic, and party soundtrack signal with a firebrand that the target audience is German adolescents. Though adapted from a short story, The Wave hits the screen with the attitude, look and freshness more appropriate to the world of underground comics.”—JS

We Can Not Exist in This World Alone
Ben Russell, Ben Rivers/UK/USA/2008 | New Directions » [Interview]
“Featuring some of the more provocative, hypnotic and fascinating imagery of this year’s Festival, Russell and Rivers’ mutual concerns raise important questions about modernity, documentary, representation and cityscapes among many other thematic ideas.”—BG

Welcome to the Sticks
Dany Boon/France/2008 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
Comedian Dany Boon reconciles the North/South divide in this big-earning Gallic comedy. “I’m not sure this is the best French film ever, but it is a charming proponent of an old theory: Vive le difference!”—KB

Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell
Matt Wolf/USA/2007 | Music » [Full Review]
“As much an exercise in portraiture as it is a period piece, this loving tribute to the chameleonic Arthur Russell will hopefully open more eyes and ears to the ineffable brilliance of his music.”—BL

Yella
Christian Petzold/Germany/2007 | Worlds of Difference » [Full Review]
“Although the denouement is bound to have its detractors, the subtleties and consistent attention to detail add up to a very satisfying film that rewards multiple viewings.”—JS