Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
Chris Sheridan, Patty Kim/USA/2005 | Framing Reality
OVERWROUGHT direction and a trite musical score can't hinder the enormity of the story at large here: a heart-wrenching and infuriating account of a missing persons case turned bewildering trans-Asian government coverup. Piece by piece, we learn the rather scandalous truth behind Megumi's disappearance at the hands of North Korean spies out to capture and recruit Japanese language tutors. It's the stuff of a Clancy novel, and is bound to incense even the most passive. Deeply upsetting is the plight of the parents: chasing a dangling carrot of hope, unable to accept Megumi's death, paralysed by the thought of moving on, theirs is the real tragedy.

American Cannibal: The Road to Reality
Michael Nigro, Perry Grebin/USA/2006 | That's Incredible Cinema
THE CHICKEN or the egg? A circular argument that is well applied to the realm of “reality” TV. Do the media drive public opinion/attitudes and push social boundaries, or do they simply reflect the state of the society which produce it? Following the adventures of two would be screen writers, this documentary chronicles their ‘almost rise’ and their dramatic crash’n’burn as they sell their souls for the lure of money, work, and hopefully some industry credit. Not so much a damning indictment of reality television, as it is a mirror for the audience to look in and see themselves, and the society of which they are a part, this is social commentary at its sharpest, full of guilty laughs, strange personalities, and personal tragedy.—JP [Full Review]

The Aura**
Fabián Bielinsky/Argentina/Spain/France/2005 | The Way Ahead
OPTING for the mystique of low murmur in lieu of Hollywood’s manic shriek, Bielinsky's deliberate and muted style is evident throughout. Though endowed with stunning Argentinean landscapes, his camera is just as likely to linger over a squalid urban factory, a stuffed animal, a beat up old truck, or a character’s face. And linger it does, mesmerising the viewer like the siren’s song that seems so soothing to a weary ear. While the story is rife with murder, theft, impersonation and doubling crossing, it's all canvased on a picture of disconnection – as vivid as the aesthetic is subdued. Bielinsky’s sophomore feature was sadly his last; his sudden and premature death occuring in June this year.—JP [Full Review]

Avenge But One Of My Two Eyes
Avi Mograbi/Israel/2005 | Framing Reality
MOGRABI’s tightly-wound documentary has an emotional centre so frustratingly unfocussed and bitter. It is described as “an inflammatory critique of his own nation,” and it’s hard not to be interested with the ongoing issue of Israel on the world-stage. And Mograbi has certainly captured some stunning footage, heartbreaking shots of an old woman admitting directly to tape that she’d rather die than live this life. But his polemic is not structured or even vaguely arranged – instead it sits on the screen like a giant spit-ball of anger and frustration.—SS [Feature]

Ballets Russes**
Dayna Goldfine, Dan Geller/USA/2004 | Music and Dance
IMAGINE dancing choreography by the likes of George Balanchine, David Lechine and Leonide Massine, and getting to do so on a set designed by Dali or wearing a costume by Matisse! Mapping the history and rivalry of Massine’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo and de Basil’s Original Ballet Russe, this is a vivid reminder of the incomparable beauty and finesse of ballet. Consisting of archive footage and interviews, the hubris of the choreographers dominates; the creative processes, gossip, intrigue, politics and power-play that came with being beautiful and artistic are fascinating.—CB [Full Review]

Battle in Heaven
Carlos Reygadas/Mexico etc./2005 | The Way Ahead
FOR A MORE concerted take on body politics, try Reygadas’ new film. Like Bruno Dumont’s work, this handles human animalism with majestic austeurity, turning irrational flare-ups of sex and violence into skinsores of an inner malaise. Meanwhile, narrative coherence is traded in for a more environment-based experience. But rather than catalyse the anguish of Reygadas’ stony-faced everyman, the landscape only acts as a barrier, its static daylight, dim inhabitants, and anonymous street facades glimpsed as if through a sedative-haze. Inside this bubble, state and religion fight continuously for control of the reigned body, haemorrhaging into an ending that’s both sublime and totally ridiculous.—DL [Feature]

A Bittersweet Life
Kim Jee-woon/South Korea/2005 | That's Incredible Cinema
KIM'S blitzkrieg revenge opera slides regularly into sub-Oldboy territory, yet boasts all the aesthetic proficiency and haute violence of Korea's most trend-setting cinema. There's no pretension or baggage here: just hit 'n run thuggery, excruciating torture sequences, classical music, and the homicidal humour of Kim's pitch black comedy The Quiet Family. It's about as subtle as a shoot 'em up video game. [Full Review] [Feature]

Black Gold**
Marc Francis, Nick Francis/UK/2006 | Framing Reality
COMPELLING look into the inner workings of the coffee trade, critiquing the impact of global trade ‘agreements’ and practices on developing nations. This is no mere bag of facts and statistics thrown about cleverly to confuse and overwhelm – an approach which more often than not fails to connect an often willing audience. Rather, this weaves its incredibly important macro-issues around the personal story of Ethiopian coffee agent, Tadesse Meskela, who attempts, on behalf of a large number of cooperative farming groups in Southern Ethiopia, to gain a price for their coffee higher than that of the cost of production.—JP [Column]

Black Sun**
Gary Tarn/UK/2005 | Framing Reality
THIS SHORT, effective film tells the story of French artist, Hughes de Montalembert; accosted one night in 1978, muggers attempt to rob him. They eventually steal the most precious gift: his sight. de Montalembert provides the narration – essentially telling his life-story, how he recovered from this incident and picked his life up and carried on. Tarn shows the world all around; images swirl and swoon across the screen – picture evocations of the poetry of existence whether doomed (Koyaanisqatsi) or celebratory (Latcho Drom). But it is the voice – and indeed the spirit – of the film’s subject that makes this film far from being just Baraka-lite.—SS [Feature]

The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros
Auraeus Solito/Philippines/2005 | The Way Ahead
RARE, affecting cinema, this low-budget Philippino eye-opener frames the pre-pubescence of a boy who wants to be girl with a forthrightness seldom seen. The film's subject, a 12-year-old Maximo Oliveros, is entirely engaging; played with great candor by Nathan Lopez, his exuberance seemingly offsets the hard knock life of Manila at large. But his burgeoning friendship with cop signals alarm bells for his family – petty criminals floating above the poverty line – and you just know it'll end violently. A blossoming, indeed.

Brick**
Rian Johnson/USA/2005 | The Way Ahead
A HARD and fast film-noir set in the context of a contemporary Californian high school – think The Maltese Falcon meets Fast Times at Ridgemont High – this is an accomplished mystery-thriller that is more than just cheap gimmickry or a widescreen rehash of Veronica Mars. It works because dares to take its premise seriously, entertaining with a fiercely independent spirit, and without a hint of pretension. Loaded with a rapid-fire discourse of neo-noir teen jargon, a perpetually twisting plot, and a sensational Joseph Gordon-Levitt, it evokes the spirit of Howard Hawk’s The Big Sleep, yet never looses its own unique identity.—CS [Column]

China Blue**
Micha X. Peled/USA/2005 | Framing Reality
THIS ACCESSIBLE, cleverly constructed, ultimately heart-wrenching view into the lives of sweatshop workers in China follows the lives of three teenage workers in a blue jeans factory, who like most of the cheap labour pool are female and originate from poor, rural areas. Multi-layered, the film does not rely on mere reality sketches of the harshness of the workers’ lives but explores the personalities, aspirations and imaginations of its characters with sensitivity and tact. Most provocatively, it hints at who is responsible for the slave-like conditions these girls are bound to – not only the factory owners and the negligent Chinese authorities, but the whole system of global free trade and the responsibility of retailers and consumers too.—MN [Column]

Dave Chappelle's Block Party**
Michel Gondry/USA/2005 | Music and Dance
RAMBUNCTIOUS concert film that sure hits the spot. Shoehorned into an inner-city Brooklyn street, infectious stand-up Chappelle and his all-star brigade of progressive hip-hop stage a rollicking block party of phat beats and Afro-American comedy gold. Everyone’s invited. Closed emphatically by the dynamite Lauren Hill, this belongs in a movie theatre – although you'll have to fight to urge to stand up. [Full Review] [Feature] [Column]

The Death of Mr Lazarescu
Cristi Puiu/Romania/2005 | The Way Ahead
POTENTIALLY the festival’s best film, this is also likely to be its most misunderstood. An ailing elderly drunk seeking urgent medical attention may make for the most unmarketable logline ever, but this is unlike anything you’ll see this year: a magnum opus excavating the odd, frustrating, strangely compelling misadventures of Mr Lazarescu and his deteriorating condition. While it immediately eschews hyperactive/decorative medical drama tropes through its real-time precision and elongated timeline of events, there's a tragic and very human crux to it all. Darkly humorous too. [Column] [Feature A] [B]

Drawing Restraint 9**
Matthew Barney/USA/2005 | Worlds of Difference
BETWEEN this and Shortbus, Barney’s swollen member is easily the more pornographic film of the two. Honeymooners Barney and Björk charter a Japanese whaling vessel, engaging in ceremonial foreplay until they’re ready to mate. And unlike Shortbus, there’s nothing inverse about the love making here – the film builds like a textbook adult movie to the point where man and woman writhe in unison, slicing chunks of leg flesh off each other until two becomes one. If it sounds absurd, it is. Almost forgivable for its big screen lustre, and Björk’s sub-bass tribal soundtrack. Feature]

Factotum**
Bent Hamer/Norway/USA/Germany/2005 | Worlds of Difference
A MEANDERING ‘slice of life' adapted from disaffected author/poet Charles Bukowski's 1975 novel. Hamer's follow-up to Kitchen Stories trails the coming and goings of Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter-ego, as he drifts through contemporary LA. Fleeting moments of feeling serve as figurative waypoints, while interaction between Chinaski and other not-so-fringe dwellers creates genuine humour and affection. But like the moments in which they’re birthed, these quickly pass leaving only the faintest impression. Co-written by Jim Jarmusch collaborator Jim Stark.—JP [Full Review] [Feature]

Fateless**
Lajos Koltai | Hungary/Germany/UK | 2005 | Worlds of Difference
TOUGH, affecting, thoroughly polished memoir of surviving Nazi concentration camps that's also exceedingly "Hollywood" is its size and ambition. That's not necessarily a good thing. It's staunchly, if not excessively drawn out, beating the viewer into submission with its acts of cruelty and degradation. We definitely feel it. In a movie theatre, this also managed to concoct one of oddest juxtapositions I've ever witnessed: as the film's persecuted Jews suffer immeasurably from starvation, audience members stuffed their faces with popcorn and soda. Only in the movies.

Fearless
Ronny Yu/China/Hong Kong/2006 | That's Incredible Cinema
JET LI’s purported last excursion into the genre is a strange endnote indeed; here, he plays the same folk hero role of a thousand other wushu pictures. All rather uninteresting, if not for a glimpse into Li’s dark potential. As champion wushu exponent Huo Yuanjia, Li initially spends much of his time beating opponents to a pulp. Recalling the rare mean streak he fashioned in Lethal Weapon 4, the film climaxes at its halfway point with a brutal fight to the death, only to bend over backwards and reform Huo’s murderous ways, and any hope of a showpiece finale in the process. [Column]

“fps”
Curated by Phil Dadson, Sam Hamilton | The Way Ahead
A LIVE cinema programme exhibited at the legendary Civic Winter Garden. “Live art” would be an appropriate term to describe the performances on display. A combination of visual shorts with acoustical accompaniment, it created a feast for both the visual and aural senses. Though for the inexperienced like myself, the shorts at times bordered on obscure. Distinctively different, this showcased an area of New Zealand film which the general public may be unaware or have little understanding of. The unmarked seating and mellow atmosphere of the event allowed for an appropriately laidback and unpretentious viewing.—MW [Column]

The Forsaken Land
Vimukthi Jayasundara/Sri Lanka/France/2005 | The Way Ahead
UN CERTAIN REGARD winner in 2005, this is a highly stylised and alienating piece of work which plays on little moments with big implications. The results are slow moving but highly sensual; a film for feeling, not thinking. Sparsely populated, such lack of human interaction suggests equating war with personal alienation. Maybe too formal for those wanting an emotional engagement, Jayasundara nevertheless uses his style to attack what this war has meant for Sri Lanka – a forsaken paradise filled with listless, lonely, petty, cruel and uncommunicative people.—BG [Column]

Gentille
Sophie Fillières/France/2005 | Worlds of Difference
IN THE CLASSIC style of Hollywood screwball comedies, Fillières' film presents slightly off-kilter characters in a frequently hilarious and skewed look on relationships. The excellent Emmanuelle Devos stars as an anaesthetist who spends most of her time trying to avoid having to say yes/no to her Arctic palaeontologist/former triathelete boyfriend's proposals for marriage. She is also pursued by a doctor who is a patient at a mental hospital. While overly quirky and unfocused, the fact that it's hard to pin down accounts in large part for it being rather enjoyable.—BG [Column]

Heading South**
Laurent Cantet/France/Canada/2005 | Worlds of Difference
LIKE Time Out’s stoney-faced spectre, the three colonial lionesses that prowl Cantet’s film just wanna play hooky, though they’ve usurped the psychopathology with a more modest aim: to lie in the sun and get laid. The burnished savannah of Haiti is their home-away-from-home: On a beach scene cut from diamond, two lithe young black boys entertain Charlotte Rampling’s aging Ellen, the three of them trading coy seductions like gifts between cultures. And while that may not sound like much on paper, Cantent deals out anachronisms with spiked discord.—DL [Column]

His Big White Self**
Nick Broomfield/UK/2006 | Framing Reality
RELYING heavily on his earlier doco, The Leader, His Driver And The Driver’s Wife, Broomfield’s certainly loves to revisit past material. Here, he ventures back to South Africa to check on Eugene and the other two titular characters from the first film: he finds Eugene reborn as a church-going poet; the driver is still driving, but now he runs an ambulance rather than being involved in Eugene’s campaign; the driver’s wife lives alone, helping raise her grandchildren. Whatever agenda Broomfield might have, his films are about human beings. Often they’re about humans that follow more animal traits than human instinct; but he exposes very real, very sad human stories.—SS [Feature]

Homegrown: Works on Film**
Presented by the Moving Image Centre | The Way Ahead
WHAT sets apart this year’s programme is a lack of absolute clunkers; indeed, our local industry is not only active and thriving, but also taking a step up in terms of new filmmakers as well as our more recognised feature directors. This year sees the usual broad range of inventive concepts including: an enthralling dance narrative, a subversive political commentary, a period piece romance, a pastoral comedy, and two, more abstract, explorations of loss and consequences.—JP [Column A] [B]

The Host**
Bong Joon-ho/Korea/2006 | That's Incredible Cinema
A BRAZEN exercise in video gamesmanship, Bong’s film is a monster mash for the PlayStation generation: a direct-to-cinema survival horror that isn’t based on a best selling video game. It may just be the best video game adaptation that never was. Shrewdly, he cuts to the chase, introducing the film’s bestial mutation in an instant, with the ensuing chaos a brilliantly conceived torrent of mass hysteria: the camera flees amongst panic-stricken bystanders, the utter terror is palpable, while the monster doesn’t beat around the bush. Through all of this, Bong picks away at genre convention, although is naturally more subversive in his deployment of humour and his championing of lowlife. It is at once gravely serious and abruptly humorous. [Column]

Host & Guest
Shin Dong-il/South Korea/2005 | The Way Ahead
THIS DEADPAN, deadbeat gem is the stealth anti-war film of the festival. When a downtrodden film professor gets locked in his own bathroom, and is saved by a door-to-door missionary, the most unlikely of mateship develops. Hilariously, the odd couple go to a screening of Uzak, only to be kicked out in an irate customer rage against commercial cinema! George Bush later cops an unsavory tissue in the face. It's not all jokes though, and edges towards the most moving of endings.

In Between Days
Kim So Yong/USA/Canada/2006 | The Way Ahead
AIMIE's recent move to Toronto brings about loneliness and an unrequited crush on her Korean guy-friend from school in Kim's feature debut: a predominantly visual experience filled with assured performances from non-professionals who seem to be caught in urgent, half-expressed emotional and sexual expressions of Adolescence. Recalling in form at least neo-neo-realist works like Unknown Pleasures and Rosetta, this is far more gentle and fleeting, and made with the barest of essentials: a skeletal narrative, austere cityscapes, occasional music between long silences, and faces forever in extreme DV close-ups.—MA Column]

An Inconvenient Truth**
Davis Guggenheim/USA/2006 | Framing Reality
AL GORE concisely, entertainingly, grippingly, lays out the eco-disaster that the planet has embarked upon – none of which is news, but is reiterated in a way that frightens as much as it enlightens. This is a wholly didactic film whose one aim is to galvanise public support for Kyoto and other carbon-reducing measures. Gore meanwhile wields emotional simile without compunction – he likens his advance eco-warning to Churchill warning about the coming threat of Nazi Germany. Most sobering are the scenes of his 2000 election loss – what a terrible turn for the planet, if only he had won we may not be in this state.—IC [Full Review]

Iraq in Fragments
James Longley/USA/2005 | Framing Reality
A FRAGMENTED Iraq told in three stories: a Sunni child who works in a café; a Shiite commander; and a Kurdish farmer and his family. Shot in saturated, poetic tones, Longley's documentary aims to show the beauty of Iraq – an aestheticisation of its people, cities and country. It is at its most successful in allowing Iraqis – not foreigners – to comment on their own situation; individual testimonies that manage to grasp at the sheer complexity of the country.—BG [Full Review]

It's Only Talk
Hiroki Ryuichi/Japan/2005 | Worlds of Difference
EVOKING in spirit the 21st century absence of Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo, Hiroki's cinematic blog of a thirty-something manic depressive is similarly besotted with its radiant lead actress. Like Mambo's Shi Qi, Terajima's blithe modern woman traverses ecstatic highs and subterranean lows in a performance of staunch, yet fragile independence. The camera can't get enough of her. For Hiroki, this is far from a dreaded "difficult second album"; the follow-up to his breakout feature Vibrator, this is less self-conscious and considerably more assured. [Column]

Keane*
Lodge H. Kerrigan/USA/2004 | That's Incredible Cinema
UNEASY tension saturates this hard-edged and unflinching "headlock" around the inner turmoil of a schizophrenic father tormented by the abduction of his daughter. Dread and suspense builds, and it's precarious to say the least. New York gets a "make-under", and its seedier, venal core is appropriately discomforting, while Damian Lewis in the title role manages to be disturbingly convincing. The American sibling of The Son. [Full Review] [Feature A] [B] [Column]

Kirikou and the Sorceress
Michel Ocelot/France/Belgium/1998 | Animation
A DELIGHT. Barely a minute old, pint-sized Kirikou crawls from his mother's womb (possibly the most effortless child labour ever), can speak fluently and walk, and takes it upon himself to save the village from evil sorceress Karaba, who's cursed their spring with eternal drought and expunged all men except one. Never mind that he's the size of a football! Ocelot's African locale is refreshing without a hint of cultural butchery; his animation a flickering pop-up book of acrylic-coloured planes and rhombus-fashioned bad guys. It is an ode to the precocious, inquisitive, incorrigible child in all of us. Also screening: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts.

KZ**
Rex Bloomstein/UK/2005 | Framing Reality
LEST we forget. That’s the consensus among the film’s tour guides, men who shepherd tourist parties and field trips throughout the monument of horrors that is Mauthasen’s notorious concentration camp. Soon enough, we’re silenced into disbelief as the past atrocities of SS officers are administered in cold, methodical doses: stones in a wall are equated to death; green pastures are revealed as sites for mass murder; ritual dehumanisation is par for the course. Perversely, Bloomstein's film exposes new atrocities too, including McDonald’s emblems in the same breath as signage towards Mauthasen. Not the companion piece to Fateless as some might like you to believe, but its more disturbing, sobering alternative.

Last Supper
Mats Bigert, Lars Bergström/2005/Sweden | Framing Reality
EMPLOYING diagrammatic set-pieces to distill the sobering, ironic, often morbidly fascinating particulars of death by execution, this plays much like an Al Gore PowerPoint presentation, with the paradox of the "last supper" – a bizarre form of clemency before the merciless taking of life (technically homicide, as a coroner's paperwork reveals) – its disquieting central theme. The film's "flash cards" are wildly inventive, but somewhat repetitive; what saves this from tedium is a weathered ex-convict who's job is to prepare death row cuisine. With over 200 last meals, his vast insight is chilling, wise, and strangely profound.

L’Enfer**
Danis Tanovic/France/2005 | Worlds of Difference
FOLLOWING Tom Tykwer’s entrancing Heaven, we’re presented here with a number of versions of Hell in the second film of a triptych the late Krysztof Kieslowski left unmade. In telling the stories of three sisters, Tanovik lavishes the viewer with dark visuals and a warped and evocative sound design. Rich with classical illusions relating to transgression the three stories hark back to a common trauma that not one sister has dealt with. The central contention is that tragedy is dead and all that is left is drama, with the script also presenting the disparity between destiny and coincidence. In the final scene the girls‚ lives are drawn together and justice is meted out. A striking but not entirely convincing film.—CB [Column] [Feature]

Linda Linda Linda
Yamashita Nobuhiro/Japan/2005 | Worlds of Difference
YAMASHITA's follow-up to his oddly affecting No One's Ark is clearly bidding for a younger mainstream audience. Though turned saccharine sweet, he retains and even refines his acute appreciation of laconic and deadpan comedy. The film’s title is taken from a deliriously catchy Blue Hearts’ J-punk track; a song four members of an all-girl band resolve to play at their end-of-season high school festival – if only they can make it to the venue on time. Fashioning a disarming sense of adolescent awkwardness, Yamashita captures perfectly his subjects’ listless energy and acts of muted high school hegemony. Bae Doona as the timid Japanese-speaking Korean exchange student steals the show.—CS [Column A] [B] [Feature]

A Lion in the House**
Steven Bognar, Julia Reichert/USA/2006 | Framing Reality
A MARATHON of human resilience, this four-hour monument embraces five cancer-stricken children and their families over six grueling years. It is as affecting as documentary filmmaking gets, and is bound to break your heart. It is also an intimate drama of ebb and flow; of medical setback and breakthrough as gripping as The Death of Mr Lazarescu. Bognar and Reichert invest heavily, and they capture everything. Through the constant relapses, excruciating treatments, and fleeting windows of light, some die, and some live on. But the young keep fighting. [Column]

Lonesome Jim**
Steve Buscemi/USA/2004 | Worlds of Difference
INNOCUOUS DV indie is one throbbing post-Trees Lounge hangover – a benign take on not-yet-matured adults, and the doldrums of life in slow motion. Director Buscemi has the right ideas about failed twenty-somethings with no other option than to return home, but it's almost too understated. Tellingly, his moping on-screen persona is apparent throughout, even though he remains firmly behind the camera.

Los Olvidados
Luis Buñuel/Mexico/1950 | Out of the Past
EXPLOITED and abused for too long, this disturbing work was made during Buñuel’s exile to Mexico following his outrages during the 1920s and 30s. Highly influential in gaining respect for “Third World Cinema”, Buñuel broke the mold of low-budget genre films that typified Latin American cinema with this ruthless portrait of street kids, free from any sentimentality or romanticism. An undeniable masterpiece, and one of the most powerful and brilliant indictments of a society ever filmed.—BG [Full Review]

loudQUIETloud: A Film about the Pixies**
Steven Cantor, Matthew Galkin/USA/2006 | Music and Dance
AS ONE OF the most influential and underrated bands of their time, this film revisits the Pixies over a decade later. ‘Black Francis’ now releases alt-country records; bassist Kim Deal looks after her mum; Joey Santiago, the man whose guitar still sounds unique is domesticated and does a bit of music; and drummer Dave Lovering among other things is a magician. Conventional and without the grotesque fascination of other recent music docos, this nevertheless opens up old wounds and contains some still-killer live performances.—BG [Column] [Feature]

Loulou
Maurice Pialat/France/1980 | Out of the Past
PASSIONATE Pialat fling with an oafish Gèrard Depardieu and the incomparable Isabelle Huppert as the film's sizzling young couple. One of several festival items this year to plumb the restless passages of youth, this adds sting through the clash of social codes. The institutional Depardieu is suitably restless as the unemployed lover boy, but it's Huppert who's most palpable as a gradient of hot and cold. [Column]

Lunacy
Jan Svankmajer/Czech Rep/Slovakia/2005 | Worlds of Difference
SVANKMAJER has as much fun as ever in this sometimes debauched – and quite obviously insane – hybrid of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade. Set inside a 19th century lunatic asylum, it masquerades as an ideological horror film; we know it's really an open invitation into the Czech surrealist's deranged, anarchic head. His signature stop-motion animations are just as fiendish: imagine variety meat sideshows and severed tongues with a mind of their own. Not one for vegetarians.

Mary
Abel Ferrara/USA/Italy/France/2005 | Worlds of Difference
MATTHEW MODINE returns to Ferrara’s cinema as the director of a controversial film about the final days of Jesus and his relationship with Mary Magdalene. In Jerusalem, Modine’s lead actress Marie has retreated with her newfound discovery of spirituality; in New York City, Modine’s premiere is being covered by the spiritually-challenged and unravelling Ted Younger’s TV show. Overlapping identities shift gracefully between the various screens, with a Ferrara-ian meta-ness of dissolving images held by recurring obsessions with filmmaking, spirituality, and fidelity, and of sublime tonal inconsistencies held in naked embrace, ironically making the film a truly spiritual investigation into faith and morality.—MA [Column]

Matthew Barney: No Restraint**
Alison Chemick/USA/2006 | Framing Reality
THOSE with a death wish for Matthew Barney may actually find an ally in this pin-holed documentary purporting answers: despite assessment of key themes, motifs and formative influences, most interviewed in the film readily concede utter bemusement. This includes his beloved Bjork, who at one point compares him to Picasso, before scrunching the lines on her forehead into the shape of a question mark. Barney is most fascinating as an abrasive amalgam of art and sport: an all-American wide receiver, a Hugo Boss commercial, he defies the anti-mainstream of the art world. If the whole lube and testicular fetish makes no sense, just try picturing a football player turned conceptual artist...

Men at Work
Meni Haghighi/Iran/2006 | The Way Ahead
FOUR educated, middle-aged men conspire to make the entire male species look like Neanderthals in this sly Iranian oddity. Returning from a ski-trip down a winding mountain road, the foursome stumble upon a 12-foot phallic rock on the edge of a cliff. Obviously the most logical thing to do is to push it down. And they try. That's the film; reasons as to why vary greatly and are up for debate. Personally, I see it as a shrewd parody of 2001: the stone is a monolith, the men are chest-banging apes. And as their methodology swings from a donkey and a rope, to layman's physics, to 4WD muscle, we realise mankind isn't nearly as evolved as we'd like to think.

The Method**
Marcelo Piñeyro/USA/Italy/France/2005 | Worlds of Difference
A LOW BUDGET psychological thriller which explores the dark, competitive side of human nature, a la Lord of the Flies, Piñeyro’s film does not so much stir our thinking as it does raise our eyebrows. Seven executives apply for a high level job and are put through a bizarre interview process which turns into a ramped up ego-fest competition. The ‘survival of the cruellest’ concept in itself, though not new, is certainly rich enough to support any number of explorations, but Piñeyro fails to capitalise, producing a series of ill-conceived character interactions that are neither convincing, nor particularly poignant. It plays more like a Spanish soap opera.—JP

Mind Game
Yuasa Masaaki/Japan/2004 | That's Incredible Cinema
SIMPLY deranged anime from alchemist Yuasa is the biggest and best headache you'll receive all year: a rainbow frieze of Takashi Miike set-piece, death by rectal blast, arcade car chases, Pokemon-kitsch, narrative rabbit holes, whale payback, garish rotoscopes, epileptic montage sequences, and a million-and-one other tangents. Has to be seen to be believed. [Full Review]

Mutual Appreciation
Andrew Bujalski/USA/2005 | The Way Ahead
THE BEST and truest American indie of the year is a no-frills revelation: a twenty-something threesome of post-grad blues, stunted ambition and the stasis of youth. Bujalski shoots in evocative black and white (in the footsteps of Cassavetes and Jarmusch, no less), knows the social framework of young people inside-out, and has such an uncanny feeling for it all. Don't miss it. [Full Review]

* Also screening in Christchurch
** Also screening in Christchurch and Dunedin