Category Archives: Perth Film Festival 2013-14

Reviews of PFF movies for season 2013-14

Stories We Tell Movie Review

Featuring: Michael Polley, Harry Gulkin, John Buchan, Susy Buchan, Mark Polley, Joanna Polley, Sarah Polley
Director: Sarah Polley
Writers: Sarah Polley, Michael Polley (also narration)

2013-14 Lotterywest Perth Film Festival season dates:
Somerville: 6–12 Jan, 8pm
Joondalup Pines: 14–19 Jan, 8pm

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: A riveting, moving, genre-bending mind-boggler of a film.

Review:
Director Sarah Polley was a small child when she lost her mother Diane to cancer. This film documents her quest to discover the person her mother was, but delivers far more than she, her family and others she interviews – and the viewer – bargain for.

Layer by layer, interview by interview, a composite and sometimes contradictory picture of Diane emerges. All seem to agree that she was charismatic and exuberant, a party-loving, life-embracing thespian whose larger-than-life presence endures among those who knew her. However, she is described by some as guileless, an open book, by others as secretive, with her sunny façade concealing a troubled soul within.

Not so extraordinary, you say? Who among us is without secrets? And are not perceptions within families certain to differ, given the complex nature of family and family dynamics? Continue reading Stories We Tell Movie Review

Mood Indigo Movie Review

Featuring: Audrey Tautou, Romain Duris, Gad Elmaleh, Omar Sy, Alain Chabat
Director: Michel Gondry
Writers: Michel Gondry, Luc Bossi

2013-14 Lotterywest Perth Film Festival season dates:
Somerville: 16–22 Dec, 8pm
Joondalup Pines: 24, 26–29 Dec, 8pm

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: Ingeniously inventive, but dramatically slight.

Story:
Colin (Romain Duris) is wealthy enough not to have to work. Although wanting for nothing materially and pampered by his manservant and chef-magician Nicolas (Omar Sy), he is missing a soulmate. Enter Chloe (Audrey Tatou), whom he falls in love with and marries. Soon after, she contracts a strange illness emanating from a water lily taking root in her lungs. Exhausting his wealth in trying to find a cure, Colin is forced into taking on work, and fights a losing battle to maintain their fairy-tale-like happiness


Review:
The opening scene features an ornate, domed office full of typists, row upon row, hammering away lines of a story on retro typewriters. Uh-oh, smells like meta-fiction. Literary construction line workers composing a novel? Someone please smack a wooden stake into the heart of post-modernism (difficult target, granted)! Then comes a title announcing that the story that follows is true “because I imagined it from beginning to end.” Umm… Continue reading Mood Indigo Movie Review

20 Feet From Stardom Movie Review

Featuring: Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Judith Hill, Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer, Táta Vega, The Waters
Director: Morgan Neville
Website: twentyfeetfromstardom.com/
Australian release date: Perth Lotterywest Film Festival 2013-14:
Somerville (9–15 Dec, 8pm);
Joondalup Pines (17–22 Dec, 8pm)

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: Illuminating, enthralling, incredibly moving – GO!


Review:
The film opens with Lou’s Walk On The Wild Side, the chorus of “coloured girls” going “doo-da-doo-da-doo-da-doo-da-doo” brought right up in the mix as the song ends, pressing in from all sides as if spirited through the dark pines that enclose the Somerville outdoor cinema. It’s a perfect choice of music and a nice touch to promote the backup vocals to the forefront. Tonight, the spotlight is on those who have spent their careers outside it. Tonight, they are the stars.

We learn that once there were only white female backup vocalists who read their parts off music sheets. These girls were professional, hit the notes, knew their stuff – but were limited to the lines they were fed, and the sound they put out was inevitably twee. When the black backup singers emerged, they changed everything. No more music sheets. They sang straight from the heart, working intuitively with gospel-derived harmonies (many were the daughters of preachers). Pop music had discovered its soul! Continue reading 20 Feet From Stardom Movie Review