MAN ABOUT TOWN

The old saw that real life is stranger than fiction is confirmed with remarkable cinematic dexterity in this charming rom-com about conman and serial prison escapee Steven Russell , currently serving a 144 year prison sentence in a Texas penitentiary for charges including felony escape and embezzlement. Written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (who also co-wrote the screenplay for the scabrous comedy Bad Santa ), I Love You Phillip Morris is a frenetically paced, deviously plotted, blackly comic, and deeply romantic account of Russell’s love-fuelled life of crime. That its overt gay content has caused it to be shelved by its US distributors for months – a similar situation exists here in Australia, where it will probably go straight to DVD – is a crying shame, for I Love You Phillip Morris is truly one of the funniest comedies I have seen in years. When we first meet Steven Russell (played with exuberant flair by Jim Carrey) he is lying in a hospital bed, apparently dyin...

TO DIE LIKE A MAN The latest film from Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues is, like his first two features, O Fantasma (2000) and Odete , a queer-themed drama that borders on melodrama; but unlike his earlier films, To Die Like a Man is filmed in such a stylised and fragmented way as to drain almost all emotion from the story in progress. It opens with a group of camouflage-clad soldiers on a night-time training exercise in a forest. Two of the men creep away from their comrades, and once alone, fall into a passionate embrace which leads quickly to sex, and then to violence. Next we meet Tonia (Fernando Santos), an aging drag queen dealing simultaneously with two major dramas: his loss of status in the nightclub where he has worked for years, and a highly strung junkie boyfriend, Rosario (Alexander David), who is young enough to be his own son. At Rosario’s insistence, Tonia is contemplating having a full sex change; a procedure which is explained to viewers in detail early in t...

SPINE TINGER! THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY In 1950s’s Hollywood, horror film maker William Castle fancied himself as a low-budget Hitchcock; a larger-than-life personality whose suspenseful movie titles – including The Tingler , House on Haunted Hill , 13 Ghosts – were marketed with originality and flair. Unfortunately for Castle, while his movies were hugely successful at the box office, the showman-like gimmicks he employed – buzzing seats, flying skeletons, life insurance policies to cover the possibility of his audience members dying of fright – totally overshadowed his directorial flair. The Hollywood establishment snubbed him, and history relegated him to the B-list – until now. Director and producer Jeffrey Schwarz’s loving tribute to William Castle features a wide range of interviews with Castle’s friends, family and fans – including the likes of directors John Waters and Joe Dante, whose love of Castle’s work influenced their own filmmaking careers later in life – a...

FIRST SQUAD: MOMENT OF TRUTH Screening as part of MIFF's animation program, this Japanese-Russian-Canadian co-production was an odd beast indeed: an occult retelling of the Nazi war machine’s 1942 invasion of Russia as seen through the eyes of a teenage psychic and her dead best friends. Nadya is the sole survivor of First Squad, a group of psychic soldiers trained by Russia’s mysterious Division 6 (a military branch dedicated to winning the war by magical means). Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and amnesia in the wake of her friends’ deaths, Nadia is sent to Moscow by a mysterious, Obi-Wan-like monk, where she is re-recruited by Division 6’s leader, General Below, and charged with an important mission. It seems that the Nazis too have a psychic division, the Ahnenerbe, whose dark sorcerers have summoned the spirit of an evil warlord from beyond the grave: Grandmaster Baron Von Wolff, the leader of a terrifying undead horde. Despite being under constan...

If you've come here looking for my thoughts and impressions of some of the films screening at MIFF this year, as will probably be the case for new visitors who have come here via Google searches (and welcome! Feel free to comment, provide me with links to your own blogs, etc), I thought I'd take this opportunity to point you in the direction of a few other folk who are blogging the festival also. My very dear friend Cerise Howard (who joins me on 3RRR every second Thursday to discuss screen culture events in our 'Fistful of Celluloid' segment) has just recently joined the blogosphere. Very recently indeed, in fact. You can catch her MIFF impressions - as well as a very handy list of films that are getting a general release , whether at the cinema or on DVD - at her new blog, A Little Lie Down . Critic and raconteur Thomas Caldwell is detailing his MIFF adventures over at Cinema Autopsy - expect informed decisions and insightful analysis from him. Over at Screen Machin...

A gentle start to the first real day of MIFF due to my hungover state on Friday - I really shouldn't have had that glass of absinthe at the after-after-party, damn it. I watched two films on Friday night, the first a restrained Polish/German co-production about teenage prostitutes, the second an unrestrained western set in small Australian town. PIGGIES Set in the early 1990s on the border between Poland and Germany, this surprisingly subtle but sometimes clichéd film from director Robert Glinski tells the story of Tomek (Filip Garbacz), a skinny 14-year old with an interest in astronomy who falls into a seedy world of teenage rentboys when he tries to earn money with which to impress his gold-digging club kid girlfriend, Marta (Anna Kulej). The film is grittily realistic thanks to the screenplay by Joanna Didik, who lived for 20 years in the same town in which Piggies is set. Glinski has wisely chosen to underplay this potentially overblown material, crafting a film...

Pre-screening drinks with two lovely girlfriends in the city, a stroll to the opulent Regent Theatre in the light, misting rain, walking the red carpet completely and appropriately ignored by the media throng, and settling into my seat to await a new Australian film: my 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival experience has begun. This year I've gone slightly crazy and booked 54 sessions on my media pass - I may not get to them all but I'll have damned fun trying. Well, fun until exhaustion and/or hysteria set in. In which case you'll find me hiding behind a couch, shivering in abject terror at the very mention of the words 'choctop' and 'popcorn'. But until such time, let the MIFF madness begin! The festival kicked off on Thursday night with the world premiere of a bland new Australian film by debut director Amanda Jane, The Wedding Party , a Melbourne-based romantic comedy about family, love and the choices we make in life. The movie focuses on t...

There are almost enough queer-themed films in this year’s MIFF program to make up an entire spotlight program, but perhaps the most unique is Brotherhood , an edgy drama about two Danish neo-Nazis whose uneasy camaraderie gradually develops into a passionate but forbidden love. Winner of the Best Film Award at the 2009 Rome Film Festival, Nicolo Donato’s debut feature aims to be a gritty and confronting story about racism, gang violence and illicit romance in an unwelcoming environment. Sadly, due in no small part to the poorly developed screenplay co-written by Donato and Rasmus Birch, it falls well short of the mark. In the opening scene of Brotherhood , neo-Nazi skinhead Jimmy (David Dencik) is seen luring a young gay man into an all-too-brief liaison in a darkened park. “You’re beautiful,” he tells the youth, in the brief moment before his fellow skinheads attack the young man and beat him senseless. Next we meet Lars (Thure Lindhardt), a handsome, 20-something ...

With its parade of gay neo-Nazis, flawed geniuses, hormonal German teenagers, bloodthirsty creatures, political thrillers, foreign-language dramas, and new features from directors such as Jacques Rivette, Harmony Korine, Todd Solondz and Samantha Morton, this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) features films for every taste, tickets to suit every budget, and caters to casual viewers and hardened cinéphiles alike. For Executive Director Richard Moore, the launch of the 2010 festival program before a packed crowd of MIFF members, stakeholders and media representatives on Tuesday July 6 was a time both for celebration and sadness, marking as it did the beginning of the end of his four years at the festival. While Moore said he would prefer to leave questions about his legacy to others in years to come, when pressed to name his proudest achievements during his time at MIFF one of the first things he mentioned was his decision, early in his tenure, to in...