The Melbourne International Film Festival starts next week. I’m hoping I’ll have a better experience than last year, where the films I caught were a fairly mixed bag, and the film I enjoyed the most was a fairly unexceptional kung fu flick. (See here and here for my comments at the time). Things are already looking up this year: the experience of working out what I could see has been made much easier by the festival organisers finally listing session times in the main part of the program, with the description of the films.
gilliam
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Tideland (Terry Gilliam, 2005)
When I saw Terry Gilliam’s Tideland at the Melbourne Film Festival last year, my immediate reaction was that the film was unreleasable. Its appearance in Australian cinemas has obviously proven me wrong. Yet its exposure to a wider population allows the opportunity to see how many, like me, find the film virtually unwatchable. Gilliam is an enormously talented filmmaker, and Tideland isn’t bad in any of the usual ways. It’s not reprehensible, or stupid, or poorly made. But it’s a deeply unpleasant experience that just doesn’t work at all.
We’re about halfway through the Melbourne International Film Festival now, and my own experience has been only average. This isn’t a reflection on the festival: it’s just the way the cards have fallen in the vast lucky dip that happens when you have to choose from a range of movies before the usual pre-release buzz. (It’s a little frightening to realise how much you rely on distributors and the media to direct your viewing).
My experience so far has been of several middling films, one good one, and one really wretched one. Which is probably a strike-rate reflecting the overall quality of any given sample of movies. But I do hope the second week throws me up something really excellent. But here’s what I’ve seen so far.