It didn’t start well. It was fair to say that the Sydney Film Festival technology was a bit of a battle this year. When tickets first went on sale, website issues and missing apps made buying sessions a bit like taking a flimsy brolly into a windy rainstorm. Given that the weather tends to turn around this time of year, it was an apt analogy.
Nevertheless, we persisted. Not for nothing. It’s with no false hyperbole that we say SFF remains our favourite event on the film calendar. (Sorry, other festivals – we love you too). The super responsive folks at the box office took all of our griping on board and still managed to deliver over 300 films across 12 days in Sydney.
Year in and year out, SFF has provided us with a group of films from around the world that have consistently got us excited or completely snuck up on us. SHOPLIFTERS was on our “must-see” lists from the start of the year, while WE THE ANIMALS and AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL took us by surprise. Especially given the latter was 4-hours of nihilism.
As we’ve repeatedly said in past years, we all curate our own festival in a way, but themes starts to emerge regardless. Three fashion films spoke to the unique talents of Guo Pei, Alexander McQueen, and Vivienne Westwood and their creative process. Coming of age and self-identity emerged from THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST, MIRAI, LEAVE NO TRACE, and DISOBEDIENCE. Horror of the body and mind followed UPGRADE, GOOD MANNERS, and Gaspar Noé’s divisive CLIMAX.
The two main features on The Reel Bits, Asia in Focus and Australian Film, provided some gems. In addition to the ones already mentioned, THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN was magical and moving. However, the highly anticipated BURNING…was not. Australia’s TERROR NULLIUS was a reminder of our cinematic past, and how we are all the inheritors of stolen land. WIK VS QUEENSLAND could be viewed as a companion piece, showcasing the social and political movements that have attempted to remedy that past.
Links to the full reviews have been provided where available, but check out our full coverage of the festival at our 2018 Sydney Film Festival portal. Our tweeting throughout the Festival has also been saved on Wakelet. Got a differing opinion? Sound off in the comments below.
★★★★½ – Super Highly Recommended
SHOPLIFTERS: Funny, heartbreaking, and socially aware, Hirokazu Kore-eda once again shows his mastery of demonstrating the subtle way in which humans do human things. Kore-eda has assembled one of his strongest casts to date, with family and new faces alike pulling in award-worthy performances. Put simply, this is another masterpiece from the king of intimate family dramas. Read full Review >>>
WE THE ANIMALS: A visually and lyrically told coming of age story that sits on the edge of magical realism and heartbreaking reality. Director Jeremiah Zagar’s film won the NEXT Innovator Award at Sundance this year, alongside Night Come On, and is one of the most visually arresting films of recent memory. Read full review >>>
BLACKKKLANSMAN: “Dis joint is based on some fo’ real, fo’ real shit.” Spike Lee’s joint is powerful. It’s funny. It’s also a chillingly accurate dissection of modern America in the guise of a period film. It is necessary. Read full review >>>
CLIMAX: This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Gaspar Noé likes to shock, and that he does in his drug-fuelled dance rave. On one hand, it is the least realistic experience of taking drugs since Refer Madness. Yet anchored by an amazing performance from Sofia Boutella, this is 95 minutes of videos, insane dance, growing madness, and visually assaulting the senses. Noé is most definitely taking the piss here, but still manages to slip in commentary on reactionary politics, France’s toxic masculinity, and rape culture. If you make it all the way through. Now we’ll wait here while you tell us how wrong we are.
★★★★ – Highly Recommended
LEAVE NO TRACE: A mesmerizing piece from Debra Granik, the director of Winter’s Bone. It’s held together by a pair of amazing performances about a father and daughter who want to live on their own terms. Will be expecting big things in the future from young star Thomasin McKenzie.
MIRAI: Another magical, moving, Mamoru Hosoda masterwork is arguably his most intimate, but no less fantastical in its scope or magical realism. In some ways it’s his most straightforward piece, but perhaps also one of his most personal. Read full review >>>
YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE: Lynne Ramsay’s first feature film since 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin is a lightning bolt. Led by Joaquin Phoenix’s incomparable performance, this unconventional tale of a hitman will whack you over the back of the head with a hammer and leave you panting for breath in its wake.
WRATH OF SILENCE: A familiar tale of revenge gets a unique spin in what amounts to a Western by way of Chinatown. So…Rango? Or Kurosawa. Handsomely shot with a powerfully moody score. Read full review >>>
WIK VS QUEENSLAND: As a law graduate, the amount of time this writer spent studying Wik from a legal perspective is staggering. What this powerful documentary shows is the human element and the social movement that went along with the political football of the 1990s. Essential stuff. Read full review >>>
INLAND SEA: Kazuhiro Soda’s observational approach draws out unexpected narratives in a fishing town with an aging population. It also draws out cats. So. Many. Cats. Read full review >>>
AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL: It will always be difficult to separate AN ELEPHANT SITTING STILL from the tragedy surrounding it. Following the production of this four-hour musing on a self-centred society, filmmaker Hu Bo took his own life at the age of 29. A heavy theme gets an equally weighty length in this four-hour film about individuals prioritising their own gains in a interconnected society. Read full review >>>
THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN: One of those rare movies that mesmerises you with its mixture of unique storytelling and visual brilliance. It should be seen. Read full review >>>
THE BREAKER UPPERERS: Who would have thought that a film about forcibly and irreversibly uncoupling people could be so funny? A fiercely proud Kiwi comedy, and unquestionably one of the funniest films of the year so far. Read full review >>>
AMERICA TOWN: South Korea’s Gunsan Military Camp Town gets a sharp focus in this unconventional romance as glimpsed through the lens of systemic social injustice. Read full review >>>
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA: Process junkies, cinema lovers, and fans of music should all get something out of this documentary. So everyone reading this review basically. Read full review >>>
★★★½ – Better Than Average Bear
1%: Australia’s anarchistic sons get an ambitious tale of power and betrayal in this stylishly-shot debut from Stephen McCallum and Matt Nable. Read full review >>>
THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST: One of the rare instances where you laugh out loud, cringe, gasp, and do some righteous fist shaking all in the same breath. There’s some problems with character development, or a lack thereof. Yet as the film fades out into a moment reminiscent of The Graduate in its ambiguity, most audience members will recognise a universality to Cameron’s journey. Read full review >>>
UPGRADE: The kind of movie you’d expect to find in a video store in the 1980s or 1990s in a big bubble case and a sticker proudly declaring “BANNED IN QUEENSLAND!” It may not lend itself as readily to a sequel, but it certainly offers a rollercoaster of fun for the duration. Read full review >>>
BROTHERS’ NEST: An expertly paced thriller about “family shit,” albeit one that wears its influences on its sleeve. A moody score and some unexpected twists keep us glued for most of it. Read full review >>>
THE HUNGRY LION: A powerful exploration of the intersection between fake news, social media, and youth culture in Japan. It may not stick the landing, but it’s still a cutting slice of contemporary life. Read full review >>>
JIRGA: While this tale doesn’t always hit the right pace, it’s still a powerful story of redemption backed by an impressive backdrop, and shot under difficult circumstances. Read full review >>>
TERROR NULLIUS: The collective known as SODA_JERK have mashed up countless clips from Australian (and some international) films to tell the story of colonisation, toxic masculinity, and the inheritance of theft in this country. The definition of “Australian” film is liberal at times, with several clips from Stoker, and it ultimately works better as an installation piece. Still, it’s a powerful and regularly fun piece that should be seen by all Australians.
GENESIS 2.0: Hunters on a remote Arctic island dig for woolly mammoth tusks preserved in the ice so they can sell them on to Chinese markets. Meanwhile group of scientists recovers some mammoth blood and sets about trying to clone the beasts back into the 21st century. Have they learned nothing from five Jurassic Park films? The Arctic pieces are the strongest, with the film losing a bit of focus when it starts comparing the process to the cloning of puppies for the rich. Nevertheless, this intersection of tradition and technology asks some big questions about where we are going.
GOOD MANNERS: A werewolf film with a difference! A visually arresting and mesmerizing take on the genre from Brazil. You won’t take your eyes off the first half, and while it may not maintain the intensity after the radical shift at the halfway mark, the final scene is killer.
PICK OF THE LITTER: There have been other documentaries and short pieces about guide dogs (doggo docos?), but Don Hardy and Dana Nachman’s is one of the few to take us through from birth to ‘graduation.’ It’s totally manipulative (shut up I’m not crying you’re crying), but it’s a rare case of a modern documentary that’s not about uncovering a hidden murderer or the secrets of a small town. It’s properly feel good. Good boy. *pats head*
YELLOW IS FORBIDDEN: Guo Pei made headlines across the world with Rhianna’s 2015 Met Gala gown, a hand-embroidered canary yellow gown that took 2 years to construct. This fascinating portrait gets deep into process as she journeys towards Haute Couture acceptance. Read full review >>>
THE TASTE OF RICE FLOWER: Disarmingly funny and charming. It’s kind of like a rural Chinese Gilmore Girls? If Rory wasn’t practically perfect in every way, and had no hope of going to Yale or Harvard.
★★★ – Worth A Look
BURNING: An incredibly measured pace marks this moody adaptation, although some very traditional conventions lurk just beneath the surface. Read full review >>>
TEACH A MAN TO FISH: A fair-skinned Aboriginal man living away from his country struggles with personal identity, so he decides to go fishing with his father in this Australian documentary. It’s an important discussion about identity in Australia in the 21st century.
SEASON OF THE DEVIL: We were told by the producers at the start of the screening that this was director Lav Diaz’s “shortest and most accessible work.” This of a four-hour, black-and-white, score-less musical. (Diaz has made more than one film in excess of 9 hours, and the almost 10-hour Evolution of a Filipino Family). At least now we can say we’ve seen one of those. We almost have Film Festival Bingo.
THE BLOOD OF WOLVES: Kazuya Shiraishi’s bloody adaptation of Yuko Yuzuki’s novel recalls the height of the yakuza genre. However, even a terrific cast can’t sustain the intensity, and some of those dark corners are a little too dark. Read full review >>>
CHOCOLATE OYSTER: This fiercely indie Australian film is a black and white portrayal of live in Sydney’s beachside suburbs wears its influences on its sleeves. Read full review >>>
WEST OF SUNSHINE: Described as a modern Australian version of Bicycle Thieves, classic cinema and the backstreets of Melbourne collide in a debut feature that focuses on character. Read full review >>>
WESTWOOD: PUNK, ICON, ACTIVIST: Filled with talking heads on Vivienne Westwood’s iconic career is more thematically grouped than biographical. Jumping around her career, it’s hard to determine where we are at any point in the timeline. The point of view is as controlled as Westwood’s own grip on her label, which is perhaps the most insight we get into her whole process. As Westwood herself frequently says on camera, all that other stuff is “boring” anyway. Read full review >>>
GIRL: The first half of the Cannes award-winning film is an amazingly intimate film, carefully showing the support network and teen angst of a young trans girl on the cusp of adulthood. Naturally lit with a handheld camera, we do feel as though we’re living right next to the events. However, is it perpetuating a mainstream tragic trans narrative? Absolutely it is. It’s a shame that the positive aspects of the story had to be swallow by this monomyth.
★★½ – Wait For the DVD/Blu-ray
SAMUI SONG: It’s about a girl – in trouble! This very Hitchcock/De Palma inspired bit of noir has a really promising setup…and then wanders off the plantation for a while. Random subplots, a brief lesbian affair for no apparent reason, and a metafictional third act that may work better if you have any familiarity with the director’s previous works. Actually no: this still would have been a hot mess.
DISOBEDIENCE: This exploration of homosexuality within a conservative religious environment could have been so much more. The best bit is the Rachels In Stereo ever so slightly rocking out to The Cure’s “Love Song”. Read full review >>>
A VIGILANTE: What begins as a powerful tale of survival and a revival of agency descends into comic book villainy and exploitation territory. Olivia Wilde, on the other hand, is phenomenal. Read full review >>>
★★ – Rental or Streaming For Sure
THE CHANGEOVER: After establishing an interesting setup, with an affably creepy Timothy Spall, it rapidly becomes another post-Twilight YA with some convenient deus ex machinas thrown in for good measure.
24 FRAMES: The last film of the late, great Abbas Kiarostami is like an art installation piece designed to test endurance and patience. Every numbered frame just became a countdown that was one step closer to the blessed end.
★½ – It’s Your Money
COBAIN: Sigh. It’s like this film had an indie checklist and made its way down the list. There’s almost a drinking game here. Deadbeat mum – DRINK! First sexual encounter with a prostitute – DRINK! Bokeh – DRINK! Contemplation into the middle distance as the credits roll – DRINK!
DRAGONFLY EYES: The idea of using cloud-based camera footage to create a narrative, one that the filmmaker imposes voiceover and post-production graphics over, is a neat idea. The execution is more than a little wanting, meandering off into randomness. Footage of actual injurious assaults, deaths, crashes, suicides, and other violence is hard to watch, and feels exploitative here.
