All Light, Everywhere

What we have here is a documentary about the camera, about what it sees, about what it doesn't see. And it's something else.

Take a good look at cameras. In particular, spend a long time looking at police bodycameras, where they are made, how the police are told to use them... but then make everything artier. Artier... ARTIER... now really JUMP up your own butt with pretentiousness... there you go, there's the movie we have!

This has some interesting points to make, about how we look at the world. The body camera sees what the observer sees, but not what the observer does. Technology isn't seamless, images can't get everything. Our own eyes have blindspots, and so do our cameras.

But that's not enough for this movie. We need to see beyond what the camera is pointed at. We need to see the camera itself. We see the documentary makers. We have a voice over tell us things. We have (sometimes) separate captions telling us things.

We get auteur up in this!

And we also get nearly two hours of this. It is a LOT. Myself, I would like this to be made in a more straightforward way, but this method may appeal to someone.

(All this, and nothing about Deep Fakes...)

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Riders of Justice

Hey, a Mads Mikkelsen movie!

A train accident is just an accident.. or is it? One person who was on the train can't stop thinking about it, and finds proof that it was an assassination attempt, and talks to the (military) husband of a woman who died, and they end up doing something about that against the people they find behind it. However, it escalates quickly, and goes in ways you wouldn't expect.

There are some very different performances, from Mads, who gets to do a range of different things, to the "geeks" to his daughter played by Andrea Heick Gadeberg. Despite the action moments of this film, this is more of a character piece as we see people reacting to events and find someone to blame.

That said, it felt a bit slow to me, just reveling in some of the weirder moments as if to go "hey, how about this then?" So... two hours is a bit long for my patience, but that doesn't make it a bad watch.

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Notturno

Documentary time (one of many), about living in the war torn Middle East.

As the line above says, this is about people living in war torn countries. I'm not saying they are living a joyous life, but they are surviving. We see a fair few different people, including patients at a hospital putting on a play about staying strong, and kids telling stories of being under ISIS.

Not a fun movie, but a rather stark portrayal of life. But while this is a crappy time for many, people are getting by, day-by-day. Some are doing better than others. This is like some places in that the people on the low rung are just doing their things and trying to get by, but a lot of other places don't have constant war and imminent death hanging over their heads.

Life endures. It's a shit hand, but life endures.

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Undine

A nice wee film about love and killing people because of water.

Undine breaks up with one boyfriend, but ends up with another one pretty quickly. While passionate, a brief encounter shows she still has feelings for the one old. Well, we can't be having with that, can we?

Undine is a water nymph, and this movie taps into that idea, although I'm not very familiar with the myth. But the brief line on IMDB gives it away (spoilers!), so I wasn't too shocked when it happened. Knowing it was coming, events did flow nicely and it is quite the tale. Not so much of a woman scorned, but certainly a woman with her own problems that has a supernatural touch to it.

Paula Beer gives a good performance as Undine, but I was reminded by Franz Rogowski that I've seen him in a few other things. Thanks to the Wellington Film Society for broadening my horizons!

At only 90 minutes, it doesn't outstay its welcome, and indeed it is a welcome film.

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Titane

I gather that people really love this. Indeed, it won a Palme D'or. It's... weird.

A girl is involved in a car crash, and gets a Titanium skull plate... and later grows up to be a rather psychotic young woman. Conversely, there's father that lost his son, and the woman is looking for a place to hide, so 1 + 3 = 2...

Yeah, as I said, it's weird. The main weirdness is that woman is pregnant, but doesn't seem to be, but is heavy pregnant, but isn't...

Agathe Rousselle puts on a heck of a performance, with not much dialogue, but plenty of screen time to show her stuff. Vincent Lindon also has a heck of a role, and sells a lot of things well.

It's a full on character piece about lengths people will go to, and I can see that it looks like a great movie, but I wouldn't say this is a movie I'll want to watch again.

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The Eternally

Thanks to "early screenings" and because New Zealand has an early time zone, yep, I saw this last night!

Of course, with such an early screening, I do need to be more careful about spoilers than some. That said, you already probably know most of the premise from adverts and basic movie formulas. There were Deviants, and so there were Eternals to battle them. We see some past battles amidst the present day needing to deal with them, but still plenty of present day to deal with.

And at around 2 and a half hours there's a LOT of everything to deal with. To be honest, there are lot of long shots and and HUGE exposition dump that half hour could easily be edited down. And there are some odd editing choices. Aside from the huge Tell Don't Show that occurs, there is a lot of dialogue that is given while the shot is looking at the other person in the scene, who isn't really reacting much. That, to me, smacks of ADR, so I do wonder what happened there. (And yes, there is gay representation, but despite some assurances, I'm not going to say that it can't be edited around with too many issues.)

Gemma Chan, Richard Madden and Lia McHugh are the main leads. Despite Selma Hayek and Angelina Jolie being present in a lot of trailers, they feel more like supporting cast there for star power than actual presences in the movie. And best non-Eternal is easily Harish Patel's Karun. Let's get more of him!

Overall, this will be a movie people will see. I can't see this being a highly ranking Marvel feature, although it's certainly better than a lot.

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Nine Days

My watching of Film Festival films begins with... what sounds like a too adult version of Soul.

A man is watching over people living on earth, and must choose someone else to go from being a soul to being an actual human being. They are given nine days while he assesses them, and we are here for the journey.

While it could be a serious take on Soul, it is entirely it's own thing. We aren't given any context of why or how this is a thing, but we quickly get the idea and see the potential humans on their journey, as well as the interviewer himself learning about living.

Winston Duke is the interviewer, and he does a great job. However, he is easily upstaged by Zazie Beetz who steals all the moments she is on screen. Benedict Wong is enjoying himself too, and all the actors are into making this movie work.

And it does. This isn't big budget, but dang, you can see why it gets the film festival picks...

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