Movie: Clash of the Titans
An easy night on the couch watching this movie is a welcome experience. Sci-fi like effects in an ancient setting, pretty ok.
For the records: 3 out of 5
Atletu
By Davey Frankel, Rasselas Lakew
An Ethiopian athlete is a national hero struggling to make up for his last failures and discovers that recieving is as important as giving. 3 out of 5
Women Without Men
By Shirin Neshat
Visually impressive feature debut by the Iranian visual artist Shirin Neshat. She filmed the novel by Shahrnush Parsipur, which is banned in Iran, about the vicissitudes of four women against the background of the 1953 coup that made it possible for the Shah to continue his despotic regime. Dark and heavy but beautiful and emotional 3 out of 5
Sun Spots
By Yang Heng
A slow and raw picture, shot in HD and without camera movement, but every scene had it’s value. The characters tell their story with hardly any words but in an animal like way where lighting a sigaret is an anwser to a lot of questions. 3 out of 5
Les signes vitaux
By Sophie Deraspe
This is why I don’t work in healthcare, dying people is something that gets under my skin and I have a hard time handling. So I actually walked out of this one after 45 minutes. I must admit that the first half was impressive and really touched a nerve, so as far as opinions go, I will still give it a 3 out of 5.
Dogtooth
By Yorgos Lanthimos
After a quick switch of 760 people from the previous screening for 760 fresh ones, we were ready for our last feature of today’s shift. A very weird Greek family that raise their two daughters and son within the privacy of their own remote home. You would think that the subtitle-guy had a very bad day, but that is not the case. If you like the not-so-ordinairy films, watch this one. It’s strange, often very funny and shocking. You will be surprised. A 3 out of 5 for this one.
Wednesday Morning Two A.M.
by Lewis Klahr
First short by a 54 year old director that says he has reached the age at which he can do whatever he wants. It’s shows, as I presume the making of the short was a great trip but when I need to grasp it in 10 minutes, I fail to do so. Inspired by his mother who was an interior designer, you see a lot of textures, filmed in motion and blur on a song from the 60’s. Weird, interesting …
The last film on day 2 of the IFFR 2010 was an animation feature by director Wes Anderson with the voices of a lot of very well known Hollywood actors. For the ladies, George Clooney made a star appearance, I could only think about Nespresso :-)
The script was good and the humor in the lines of text was a joy getting the audience laughing with ease. But it is a bit of an odd one amongst the rest of the movies I’ve seen so far and expect to see during the rest of the festival. It’s a 20Th. Century Fox feature with the budget that a lot of directors can only dream about.
It’s funny, easy to watch and with a good “family” feature. But as far as the festival expectations go, I’ll give it a 3 out of 5.
An absurd Asian movie from the young director Ishii Yuya. Long story short: a 3 out of 5.
There were funny parts but the absurd-ism was maybe not absurd enough. A far fetched tale on a teacher and here student running away from home. The more Asian movies I see the more the cultural differences make me judge a movie by my western standard a hard one. It’s a thing to grow into and not something that i’m getting used to overnight.
This movie was ok, but I bet there are a lot still to come that will out stand this one.
That’s it, the festival has started and the first official screening was a fact:
An emotional feature of Park Chan-OK (her second one).
The amount of people walking out of the screening was limited, although 2 older men left just after scene where the audience held their breath and though “OMG, NO” … I would have thought that some mothers would have left, that couldn’t bare the sight. Yes, shocking moment and go and see for yourself.
The time-line was a bit confusing, I am obviously not used to Asian faces so it’s hard to get a grasp about the point in time certain events happen. There are some sort of flashback moments that take you to an early age where events unfold that explain the characters emotions and tell the who and why of a happening.
All in all a potentially good film, but not my cup-of-tea due to the asynchronous time-line of events that disrupted the enjoyment of the film for me and it made me puzzle too much about what I was looking at, when is this and who is that…. I lost the story at some points. I didn’t feel like walking out though…certainly not, it was intriguing enough that I wanted to see how it ended….
