MAN ABOUT TOWN

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...

FLAME & CITRON (Dir. Ole Christian Madsen, 2008) This grim exploration of life as a resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Denmark during the dying days of World War II is based on a true story, and stars Mads Mikkelsen and Thure Lindhardt as partisans lost in the fog of war. Ordered to assassinate collaborators and traitors, these two “soldiers without a front” soon find themselves drifting away from friends and family, the moral ambiguity of their actions placing increasing pressure on their relationships and themselves. Set in Copenhagen, and shot in cold blue tones, Madsen directs this increasingly complex story well, but given I fell asleep part-way through the film – a victim of festival fatigue – it would be inappropriate, not to say unethical of me to review it in further detail. Unrated MORPHIA (Dir. Alexei Balabanov, 2008) Set in a remote corner of Russia in 1917 that has not yet been touched by revolution, this bleak study of addiction and tragedy is not for the faint-heart...

So now I've managed to squeeze in a total of 12 sessions at the Melbourne International Film Festival , which to people who only see a couple of movies a year will seem like a lot of cinema-going in just 13 days, but by my usual festival-going standards is pretty pissweak. Damn work deadlines and tiredness-generating-workloads interfering with my film-viewing pleasure... Enough grumbling: time for details. BOB MARLEY: FREEDOM ROAD At only 54 minutes, this brief doco about reggae superstar Bob Marley's life, death and career was, unfortunately, the most unsatisfying film I've seen at the festival so far. Its reverential tone never dipped far beneath the surface of the man's life and music; an impression unfortunately bolstered by a series of personal testimonies from those close to Marley, none of whom seemed to have anything bad to say about the man. In short, Bob Marley: Freedom Road felt like a clumsily-produced piece of filler for a cable TV channel, and I regret wa...