MIFF 2019 : preparation

Yep, that time again, my kinderoons o' the screen. Freezing queues and watery coffee, sniffles, sore throats and viral sleep-ins, narcissistic oafs who fail to distinguish the difference between their own lounge rooms and public spaces, but CINEMA the great and powerful for two fat weeks!

The app came down smoothly, replacing the old one while I slumbered. Before that, the program was published online days before it was open for bookings and sales for the likes of me (i.e. non-members). Nevertheless, I could still create a wishlist and had several mini-passes worth of sessions so filling out the ten plus three was a matter for elimination. If that process bores you, please skip the next paragraph.

The way I do it works but it depends on you having time off during the day. A mini-pass is ten tickets plus three weekday morning to afternoon sessions. I pick everything I really want to see and add all sessions for each title to the wishlist. Then, I comb through again and pick off anything that suits less than others. This could be time of day (avoiding weekends where possible) or preferred venue but it speeds up the process. Also, as I dislike overcrowded sessions, I will choose against anything in the selling fast/standby list. Sometimes this means I miss out on films that don't get a subsequent release but that's life. In the end I have thirteen films hopefully good and true with plenty of gaps for the inevitable extra tickets.

I was able to make all these decisions from the website alone. There are some awkward aspects to the navigation on the site, especially when you are trying to use the calendar (returning from a date later than the opening day stays there regardless of what you choose in the drop down so you have to reload the page to use it again). But you can get through to films you might like by following the curated themes in the sidebar, before going deeper and looking around for the more obscure stuff that I like to include in any minipass (the stuff, in other words, that is too low for local cinema release, video on demand or that other way of looking). It took a few sessions over a couple of nights (that long mainly because the week at work was busy and I was coming home exhausted) but I had a very neat selection on the ol' pass and no double screen days.

Good to see the Capitol is back among the venues. It's the home away from ACMI while that gets refurbished and I couldn't be happier at its reappearance. There's one screening at the Exhibition Centre. I've only been there for conferences but the auditoriums are pretty spacey. Also, the Sofitel. I've been to a screening there once and it was fine (not, the Kino, btw, which is also in the extended Sofitel complex). From the first screening I ever went to at the Forum in the late '90s (Wisconsin Death Trip on a Sunday morning) I have felt compelled to revisit and, if it's possible, I like to see my final MIFF film there. That will be the case this time, too.

There's a fair bit of work to do before the festival and my holidays start so, I'll close off here and report with reviews as I see the flicks in the coming weeks. Longer reviews here and potted ones on letterboxd . And then I'll take a week off to catch up on normal releases without crowds, and kick back. Oh, and I'll put a Winter Part 2 Shadows season up with a trailer sometime in the next week.

Till then, see you at MIFF.

Review: APOLLO 11

We begin as the launch of the Apollo 11 mission is only hours away. Military helicopters lift and glide over the greater area as masses of late 60s Americans tinker with their cars, look through binoculars or smile for the documenting cameras, sitting car roofs like advertising models. The gigantic transport vehicle for the Saturn rocket rolls on tracks into place. Deep within the centre of operations, the three men who will be doing this are installed in their complicated protective suits while a montage of their lives leading to this moment plays without commentary. And we marvel at the depth and clarity of the images before remembering that this was one of the greatest moments in the planet's history and the people at its heart knew how to record it. The biggest budgeted blockbusters don't have this coverage.

This is why this documentary can orchestrate moments significance into peaks and that is why it is a thrilling film. That we know this story already is no preparation for the confronting power of the lift off or the edge of seat powered descent to the moon's surface or the eerie approach the Eagle lander to the Command module as it grows from a speck to an articulated vehicle escaping the moon's pull. A single shot through the command module's port hole of the inferno of re-entry really does strike awe.

The sound design with its restless radio communication, media voices and murmuring staff at Houston adds a kind of shifting weight to the visuals. It's not just our information stream but a near-musical support for the seriousness of the moments we are witnessing. We are meant to take it for granted in this narration-free documentary but the sheer work of it must have been massive. The electronic score by Matt Morton is a prefect accompaniment to images from the time of Switched on Bach and relieves us from the overstatement of an orchestral bloat. Like the complex audio mix, it needs to respond before we know it. At times it buzzed out the cinema speakers. I'm a sucker for electronic music at the movies and couldn't have been happier.

I'm old enough to have seen the moon landing on tv. We watched it at school. It's hard to articulate what I felt about it while not yet ten years old but I do remember understanding how important it was and how that's what history looked like when a video camera picked it up. There was no question of doing any schooling for the rest of the day so we were sent home. I marvelled again at the vague blobby images on the monochrome box in the rumpus room. Mum was excited and Nanna impressed but stoic (probably infuriated that the Russians hadn't got there first). The amount of footage shown on the ABC was small enough to form a loop that seemed to be the only thing happening in the world. I still had a mind young enough to absorb information swiftly and one which saturated from repeats of the same signal. I went to the table and drew, crayon on paper, with my back to the tv.

I was still there and still in the moment, I'd just run out of space for the moment. But as dismissive as that seems it means that I recall clearly the general thrill in the world at the sight of it and the press of great big history thickening the air. A film like this (and please try to see it at a cinema) fills in so much left to my imagination. The best part of that is that the truth of it is actually better.

Review: PARASITE

The Kim family are down and out but after a considerate favour the son is given a job as a tutor which leads to the other three Kims replacing the rest of the rich family Park's staff through a series of cons too ingenious to spoil. As the Kims make themselves increasingly at home in their fortunate bliss the breach arrives suddenly and sets the tale off into a charge toward a violent climax.

The complexity, here, is not in a weave of themes. The son, Ki-Woo frequently describes things admiringly as metaphorical. Another character spends more screen time than necessary lampooning North Korea in a scene that already involves a direct comparison between an app's send button and a nuclear one. A third act scene renders literal the notion of keeping one's head above water. Bong Joon Ho who gave us the forward thrust of Snowpiercer, the still but deep waters of Mother and the freak-out of The Host is far less interested in his audiences wasting time guessing at his themes than he is playing them out. And it's no different here as have and have not, cultured and demotic, privilege and destitution all meet in the melting pot of aspiration.

Those things catered the cast is put through a workout from nuance to physical comedy so athletic it borders on shock. Veteran Song Kang Ho, whether detaching from the noise of the world into a meditative state or battling to hold his fury gives us a lot of what the film is about. This is an ensemble piece but Song carries its weight until his character can no longer bear it. It's an impressive turn.

This is a comedy but it is not one that begins with gags and multiplies them. For all the strident indicators of the social divide on show we are given a gentle start and naturalistic introduction to characters which compels us to invest when the pace and stakes lift. This is simply masterful filmmaking. If this review is briefer than usual it's because I will not spoil this spoilable thing but more so that I just don't want to collapse into gushing. Parasite took out this year's Palme d'Or at Cannes. It deserved it.