MIFF 2010 Recommendations
World on a Wire (Welt am Draht) by Steph Dyhin
If you want to see something you’ll be able to wax lyrical about at dinner parties for months to come, my pick is World on a Wire. The festival guide calls it an ‘epic science fiction mystery [that] has been screened in cinemas on only a handful of occasions…a holy grail for classic cinema fans’.
At the beginning of The Matrix, Neo holds a copy of Simulation and Simulacra, in which French theorist Baudrillard describes a copy that no longer bears any relation to the original. Exploring this notion, in Daniel Galouye’s Simlacron 3 (the novel on which this film is based) a version of our world is presented as ‘a community of ‘identity units’ who, unbeknownst to them, live inside a super computer’. Sound familiar?
The Festival guide describes ‘dizzying cinematography and a bubbling undercurrent of paranoia and sexual unease’. Director Fassbinder ‘completed 44 projects between 1966 and 1982, the majority of which can be characterized as highly intelligent social melodramas’. He had a reputation as the ‘enfant terrible of the New German Cinema, as well as its central figure’, despite being far outlived by his contemporaries Wenders and Herzog. Sounds like it’ll make Inception compare to play school!
Steph is a born and bred Melbournian. A marketing account manager by day and writer by night, she’s addicted to the internet and loves music, cinema and cooking.
The Clinic by Luke Coughlan
Calling all fans of genre films, come one and all this Saturday night to Cinema Nova for new Aussie slasher flick, The Clinic. Loosely based on true events, this film is a slow-burning masterpiece of a psychological thriller, with emphasis on the “psycho”.
We’ve all heard nightmare stories about people waking in a bathtub full of ice with their organs missing, but what if a pregnant mother woke to find her unborn baby had been taken from her? How far would she go to get her baby back? What sort of people would take her baby from her like this in the first place? These are some questions The Clinic has the answer to.
Other than maybe being a little too slow to start, the pacing of the action is done just about right to keep the audience interested and not quite sure when the next thrill is coming. Plus some very powerful female performances make this film a must see for anyone sick of weak female protagonists. A great first effort from writer-director James Rabbitts, with a nice little twist at the end. Support Aussie film-making and check it out! It’s a late night double feature this Saturday at the Nova
Luke Coughlan is a self-confessed film nut & the 50+ films he is watching at MIFF, while continuing to work full time, is testament to that. Oh, and he also likes pancakes.
Rubber, Air Doll & The Messenger by Colin Wilson
If you like your movies a little quirky, then MIFF has plenty on offer. Make tracks to see Rubber, a film by Quentin Dupieux (aka Mr Oizo) about a telekinetic tyre called Robert, who goes on a rampage of death and destruction after suffering from a heavy case of unrequited love.
Air Doll is a whimsical Japanese Pinocchio-esqe tale about a blow-up doll that comes to life. Based on the manga series Kuuki Ningyo by Yoshiie GÅda, the movie looks hauntingly beautiful, but I have a feeling that it, like love so often does, will end in tears.
Another, more traditional movie, that will have a few eyes welling with tears is The Messenger. Woody Harrelson was nominated for an Oscar this year for his moving portrayal of a hardened officer whose job it is to inform the next of kin of a loved one’s death. Not a movie you will soon forget. Whatever you decide to see though, enjoy!
Colin Wilson is @coliwilso and in your pants since 2007!