Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with Dimnix as he continues his coverage of the Wellington branch of the New Zealand Film Festival. He's got plenty here, including a rave for an as yet unknown Australian indie flick called LAST TRAIN TO FREO and looks at foreign flicks like MEN AT WORK, which, as far as I know, is not the Iranian remake of the 80s classic, a Spanish film called THE METHOD and the German's take on the EMILY ROSE story (admittedly, it was their story first) in a film called REQUIEM. Enjoy!!!
Yo, dimnix here with more from the 2006 New Zealand Film Festival. In this third lot of reviews I really want to point out one film - kickass little aussie thriller "Last Train To Freo" which hopefully can get a bit of hype going and be seen by international audiences. And I've also got reviews for Iranian 'lets push that rock over' movie "Men At Work", Spanish corporate quirkiness in "The Method", and the Germans telling their version of the "emily rose" possession story - "Requiem". Here goes:
LAST TRAIN TO FREO
The thing with the New Zealand Film Festival is that it comes after Cannes and Sundance, so generally the really good films in the festival have already screened at those fesitvals and already have some hype about them. So I wasnt really expecting to be surprised by anything. But luckily this year the NZIFF is hosting the 'world premiere' of a new Australian movie called "Last Train To Freo" (directed by Jeremy Sims, written by Reg Cribb) so I guess I can be one of the first to say that this movie is a really fucking great little thriller that I hope people get a chance to see.
Based on a play called "The Return", "Last Train To Freo" plays out in real time on a single train carriage (not the flashy long distance kind, but the inner city sort). It's late at night and this is the last train to Fremantle via Perth. At first there are only two guys in the carriage - Steve (called "The Tall Thug" in the credits) and Trev are two restless thuggish characters, Steve older and with a bit of prison experience and Trev his younger follower. These two are rough, lower class guys who live off the dole and have plans to arrive in Fremantle and get drunk. They're loud and definetely have a menacing vibe, but at the same time these two are pretty funny and it's hard to tell if they're really dangerous or not. After a bit of chitchat between these two, a third passenger gets on the train - a really cute law student named Lisa. Unfortunately for her, the usual train guards are on strike so she's alone with these two thugs. She has a really shy vibe about her and there's an immediate tension as we wonder what these two guys are going to do. What follows is definetely some harrassment, but again it's hard to tell if it's just them joking around or if they have darker intentions. And finally two more passengers get on - a middleaged woman named Maureen and a man named Simon. These are our cast of characters and the scene is set, and in real time we watch what happens on the way to Fremantle.
The setup is great and having it play out in real time in the claustrophobic confines of the train carriage is a really cool idea. It's also one of those ideas that could easily fall apart, but fortunately that's not the case here and the film (which runs for 85 minutes) never bores or loses it's pace. Things are always kept interesting and unpredictable, at times relaxed and entertaining and other times really tense. Being billed as a "thriller" you know things are going to turn sour at some point but by never knowing exactly when, how or why that's going to happen the tension is awesome. This film is also really intelligent with it's characters. Not everyone matches up to their initial first impression and these characters are far more than simple stereotypes. At times this is very much a story about different classes and the prejudices between them, and every character is allowed to be sympathetic to some degree.
There's some great inventiveness going on in "Last Train To Freo". It appears that the movie really is shot entirely on a moving nighttime train - we see distant lights go by through the windows, and every now and then the train briefly arrives at a stop. And what they do with the music here is really cool... there's no real 'score' to speak of, every sound affect comes from the real situation. But they introduce this concept that "transperth" are doing a two week experiment where they play classical music on the trains to try to keep people calm and friendly. So throughout the film all these well known classical pieces are quietly playing, and that provides the score. Oh, and I should note I was happy to see this movie was shot on film, meaning it doesnt have the cheapy digital look that's plagued alot of low budget movies recently.
Being a film where the bulk of it is made up of people talking amongst each other in a confined space, it's important to have good acting - luckily the perfomances in "Last Train To Freo" are really great. Steve Le Marquand, who plays "The Tall Thug" Steve, has the most dialogue and really carries the film. His sidekick Trev (Tom Budge) who spends most of the time noisily joking and hyperactively jumping around all over the place could easily have come across as annoying, but the actor does a really great job and I think I found him the most entertaining character to watch. The others are great too - Gigi Edgley is really cute as Lisa and displays a good mix of strength and vulnerability, and Gillian Jones has a face that shows alot of life experience and gives a brave performace as Maureen.
My one problem with the film is that in the last 20 minutes or so it gets very twisty and somewhat unbelievable. There are two pretty big twists about 5 minutes or so apart and by the time the second one happened I was getting a bit worried. It's not that the twists are ludicrous or anything, but more that they just seemed unlikely and a bit unrealistic when I thought back over the rest of the movie leading up to that point. But - what comes after the twists and the conflicts and confrontations they bring to the story is all really good stuff, so it's not too much of a problem.
So overall, I really dug "Last Train To Freo" and I think it deserves a bit of buzz and hopefully it gets out there so people can see it. I don't want to get any expectations too high, but it is a really inventive little thriller that takes a cool concept and does a kickass job with it. One of the best films I've seen at the film festival and I highly recommend it.
MEN AT WORK
This movie from Iran had a premise that made me laugh, and that (and a curiosity of what a movie from iran would be like) is what got me go to along. Here's the story: Four middleaged male friends are driving through the Iranian mountains, returning home from a ski trip. They stop for a quick piss break and discover a bizarre, tall (about 12 feet high) rock standing on the edge of a cliff. They decide to try to push it off. They shove with all their might... and it doesnt budge. So do they leave it alone, and return home for the football game? Nope - they want to get that motherfucking rock off the cliff. As the hours pass by and various techniques are attempted, more and more people driving by stop to give a hand, everyone just wanting to succeed in getting the rock to fall.
And that's the premise. It made me laugh, so I went along. And how is it? Really charming for the most part, and quite funny - but ultimately it's not an idea that can be stretched out to feature length, even if the movie is just 80 minutes. Any stuff involving the rock and the inventive ways of trying to get it to fall makes for really entertaining viewing. But to stretch it out there are several scenes of these characters talking amongst themselves - and it all seems very natural and like these men really are old friends, but the things they talk about never really go anywhere. So, if the idea makes you laugh, it's not a bad film at all but it would have been better as a short. Very amusing, just a bit slow in parts.
THE METHOD
This movie from Spain is about 7 people competing for a big corporate job, all of whom show up for the interview and are put in a room to carry out the "Gronholm Method" - which has them carrying out challenges placed on computer screens (things like figuring out who the mole is, picking a team leader, who would they kick out if there was a nuclear holocaust and they were in a bunker etc). People can either leave voluntarily or be kicked out based on the challenges. The last person there has the job. All of this is set to the backdrop of a huge riot against the IMF happening outside.
The first 30 minutes of "The Method" are really fun and great. The character interactions are really well written, it's funny and it deals with the idea of personal morals vs. corporation really well, and having the riots outside was really cool. But unfortunatly, it all kinda fell apart after the interviewees have their lunch. Suddenly it all gets a bit too silly, and there are some really out of place and awkward sex and masturbation scenes, and the cleverness and ideas earlier on just seem to disappear. I was also disappointed to see that the subplot of the riots never really goes anywhere, except for seeing some burning vehicles in the closing shot. So, not terrible, there's some good stuff but it's disappointing because it doesnt really live up to it's potential. Oh - and the girl who plays the secretary is insanely cute, so it's got that going for it.
REQUIEM
This German film is based on the same true story as "The Exorcism Of Emily Rose" - that of a German girl in the 70s who has bad epilepsy and mistakes it for a demonic possession, eventually leading to her death from exhaustion after multiple exorcism attempts. Unlike "Emily Rose", this film goes for a much more legit vibe. First of all, it's German (like the true story) and there are no ghostly or fantastical images here. This film is a drama, not a horror.
Sandra Hüller plays Michaela Klingler, a 21 year old girl starting her first year of College. Her mother (who's a real bitch) doesnt want her to go due to her epilepsy (for which Michaela takes daily pills) but the support of her father wins. Most of the film is really about Michaela's experiences at College. She makes a good friend, Hanna (Anna Blomeier) and gets her first boyfriend. Things go pretty well. Until, that is, Michaela starts to have seizures - bad ones - that seem to coincide with her doing religious things, such as reaching for the cross or praying. Some people - such as her father and her friend Hanna - firmly believe the seizures to be a medical thing, part of her epilepsy, and urge her to see yet more doctors. But others - such as a young Catholic priest - begin to believe Michaela may be possessed.
This is a very slow film, but not a bad film. It's very well made and what I liked about it is that it very much feels like a 70s film - If somebody told me I was watching a movie made in the 70s I would have believed them. Overall, I think the movie's main problem is that it's too slow - it takes a long time for the possession story to really kick in. And I found the ending frustrating - the final scene itself works, but it seems like some of the most important parts of the story are told to us by words on the screen at the end of the film instead of being shown to us. So by taking so long to get to the possession story and then only showing a part of it, the film just felt like it had it's priorities a bit weird. But if you're a fan of 70's cinema and the story intrigues you and you don't mind a slow movie, this is worth checking out. And as for how it deals with the possession... I think it's made pretty clear that it's all a part of her epilepsy, but at the same time the way she acts during the exorcism is very much like a possessed person, so who knows. Oh, and I should point out that Sandra Hüller won Best Actress at the Berlin festival for this movie and she definetely deserves it. Her acting here is pretty extraordinary.
