Amer (2009) -

This is the kind of movie I expect to see at a festival like this. Amer gets in real close, it’s not for the squeamish and requires serious attention to follow, but in the end it is more than worth it. Its powerful imagery, it’s strange but clear characters and its odd pacing all serve to draw you in deeper.

As an ode to Giallo and with a styling that screams 70’s on all counts, this movie is not very likely to do very well at the box office, but every movie buff should still consider seeing it. It’s powerful film making and considering that Giallo appears to have been out of grace for quite some time, this is a worthy addition to the genre.

Hottarake no shima - Haruka to maho no kagami (Oblivion Island) (2009) -

Oblivion Island has a very original style, mixing a strange brand of hand drawn backdrops with perspective added in with computing, with characters that are fully rendered CGI. It’s a family movie and the plot is strongly reminiscent of Spirited Away. A bit too much, in my opinion, it becomes “one of those movies”.

The basic premise is clever: somewhere there’s an island where all the objects that mankind neglects are brought to, after being stolen bij fox-like serfs of some Shinto-deity. The creatures on this island have no technology of their own, but using whatever they can get their hands on and some moderate magic, they have shaped the entire island out of second hand goods.

The visuals are wonderful, but the movie is too long for its content and tends to drag on a bit around the middle. The plot is predictable, though that might be expected for a family movie, but there are hardly any surprises at all.

Recommended if you’ve already watched Spirited Away ten times and your kids are still clamoring for more.

Carlston za Ognjenku (Tears for Sale) (2008) -

Eastern European movies are in league of their own. Whenever I watch a movie from Chec(sp?), Polish, Russian or in this case Serbian movie, I get reminded that I should really plan a holiday to visit countries that have a culture so clearly separate (but no less interesting) from our own.

Tears for Sale has an exuberant, merry style - even though it is a movie about funeral wailers in a town where all men have been killed by war. It’s both serious and not at all serious and the crowded musical scenes and the whimsical characters reminded me of Hipsters. Most of the characters are stereotypical, but many scenes contain so many characters that it doesn’t matter and the plot certainly doesn’t suffer.

Recommended if you like the Eastern European style.

Always a lot of fun, the shorts. Watching the shorts adds to the flavour of the festival, although it can be hard to remember all of them, considering you’re watching a small dozen shorts back to back. The best was clearly saved for last with the excellent Logorama. But the ultra-short Barbie Butcher got a very good laugh as well.

(2010) -

A typical Philip K. Dick type of story, this is not a bad science fiction movie at all. It tells of a near future where expensive cybernetic implants have become commonplace, but are very expensive to produce. People take on insane financial plans to save their lives and when they can no longer pay the bills, the repo man comes around to take back the company property.

You can pretty much see where that’s going and the movie couples it with a buddy movie of the ‘military buddies sticking together’ kind. The plot develops in a decent enough way and though it loses some of its pace halfway through, I found the ending redeeming.

But I did have many issues with it. The characters are stereotypical even though the movie offers ample opportunity to change that. Also, I was incredibly annoyed by the blatant Volkswagen ads that appear every few minutes, with no bearing on the story whatsoever. I would recommend that people who rip and torrent this movie take those scenes out, for the same reasons they take commercials out of TV series. (of course, you shouldn’t be doing that kind of stuff in the first place, but you know what I’m saying…)

If you like dystopic scifi and don’t mind a bit of very graphic body horror, this is probably going to be right up your alley. It sure beats watching pointless torture porn like Saw XIV and it has some interesting themes, but don’t expect a masterpiece.

(2009) -

A star-studded cast in this latest Wes Anderson movie. And not just a movie, stop-motion animated movie about animals fighting humans in a Watership Down meets Wallace and Gromit if Roald Dahl had written it sort of way. Roald Dahl did write this story and his specific brand of humour, combined with some scenes that are no less Wes Anderson than his non-animation features make this one a worthwhile watch - though it is said that mr. Anderson’s actual involvement with the movie wasn’t as extensive as the billing might lead you to believe.

The voice acting is very good, the jokes are well-paced and sharp and there are many visual gags that got a healthy laugh out of me. This movie is very funny, looks great and will appeal to all ages, or at least the ages that Roald Dahl generally appeals to.

The plot could perhaps have done with a little more interest and depth, even as a movie for all ages. Apart from a subtext about the nature of creatures, both psychological and biologicalm the story is pretty straightforward, but lacking the whimsical twists and turns a good Wallace and Gromit will offer.

Do watch the title roll at the end - you might be amazed at the amount of fame in there, especially considering the brevity of some of the roles.

Summer Wars (2009) -

The festival kicks off (for me at least) with a wonderful animated feature about a boy lucking his way into spend a week of the summer with the most popular girl in school, who happens to be a young daughter of former Japanese nobility. Sound to sappy for your tastes?

Just wait until the fate of the world ends up in the hands of a gamer fighting off a rampant A.I. bent on destroying the world because of a penchant for games and no moral inhibitions. Did I mention the boy is a math genius, skillful enough to break serious encryption overnight? Wargames anyone?

The strange mix of approaches actually works very well and the attention to detail of everyday Japanese life, as well as the family situation lend a great deal of character to a movie that feels very ‘now’. There’s some serious fiction in here, but it’s set in today’s world and addresses our place in it with very lighthearted drama and even though there’s some impressive action sequences, I’d expected this movie to be rated all ages.

Recommended and very humorous, I’d say you can’t go wrong watching this.

Temperatures are climbing, the sun is showing more of itself every day, birds are laying their eggs and spring is in the air. Yes, it’s that time of year: time to lock ourselves indoors and watch the dancing shadows on the silver screen. It’s time to get creep-ed out, chilled to the bone, bewildered with enchantment and amused to tears. It’s Imagine, the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival!

After careful deliberation we’ve managed to plan a festival itinerary that will take us through 29 movies in under 9 days. Here’s what we’ll be seeing:
Read more

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) -

I love movies by writers and directors that aren’t just creating movies, but who are shaping an oeuvre - a coherent body of work that stands out from the crowd. Lynch, Cronenberg, Scorcese, Herzog and many more share this trait. Although it’s less obvious in the case of Terry Gilliam, after seeing his movies I do always feel he belongs in their ranks.

I suppose that Gilliam is not as clear cut (some would say obvious) as Cronenberg - who always explores the separation between reality and the absence thereof and often has the protagonist crossing the line in any way imaginable. In Existenz, the characters take place in an incredibly realistic virtual reality game that has a virtual game inside it and soon you start to doubt whether you know what is ‘actual reality’. In Dead Ringers, twin gyneacologists spiral out of a carefully balanced reality in which each has to see himself and see himself see him. Both living and observing their lives, they don’t like what they see. And you can go on, all his movies are about different perspectives or definitions of reality.

Gilliam is more like Lynch, in that he’s very true to a particular style and his stories are set in the everyday world. But they focus on characters that seem to live in this world, but aren’t a part of it at all. The world is their habitat, but their universe is Gilliam’s/Lynch’s fantasy and in their case, different rules apply. But where Lynch is paradoxical, dark, moody and a bit too weird for most tastes, Gilliam is more charming, enchanted, humorous and sooner silly than weird.

The Imaginarium is a typical Gilliam movie. Nothing is coincidental, but a lot of it doesn’t make sense if you look at it too closely. If you just allow the movie to carry you where it wants to take you, whilst observing the scenery, you can often deduce some of the inspiration for many of the details with hindsight. And if you take that approach to his movies, you won’t be distracted by plot holes or strange incongruities.

In the Imaginarium, you can complain about the wagon changing size and form between scenes, you can be annoyed by the unclear changes in apparent motivation of the characters, you can comment on differences in acting style between scenes, but does it really matter? The movie is not perfect, but it is unique and it casts a spell with a specific Gilliam signature - and I love to be enchanted by this old Python.

A final thing I like about Gilliam - or the way he presents himself and his work - is the serendipity and synchronicity of his enterprises. Whatever goes wrong with his movies and whatever personal problems he runs into in his career, it all appears to serve some purpose or affect his work in some mysterious way. The loss of Heath Ledger is tragic and surely some films in the future would have been better with him performing a key role, but for the Imaginarium it’s almost a blessing in disguise - and I do hope I don’t offend with that remark. It necessitates the performances of Depp, Law and Farrell as stand-ins for Ledger in the scenes beyond the mirror of Doctor Parnassus, but this works out so well, Gilliam couldn’t have imagined it better.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (2007) -

(The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

A celebration of life and a reflection on mortality, this movie is a powerful testament to the story-telling potential of film. Although I’m sure the book would be an equally - if not more - powerful statement of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s will to live, the movie puts you in a place and state of mind that is hard to achieve in any other way. The soundtrack is subtle but powerful. The camera work is disruptive and disorienting but it sweeps you along and helps to put you in the place of the protagonist, played by Mathieu Amalric [IMDb].

Whether he is a masterful actor, or whether the scenario and the voice-over are just sublime, I’m not sure. But he manages to get a strong character across that belies the fact that we only get a few minutes of this man on his feet and about. Most of the movie you see the main character paralyzed, unable to move more than his eyelid and yet you feel for him and with him.

It’s a true work of art and it needs nothing more and nothing needs to be taken away. That’s not to say everyone will like it, but I doubt there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of anything this movie could be. It takes you on an emotional roller coaster and left me unsure about how I would deal with a situation like his. It’s a true story, so calling it unrealistic is unfair. But it’s hard to imagine taking such incredibly bad odds so well. And yet the film manages to get across how this might be possible. Wonderful.

With Basquiat and Berlin already on his list of completed work, I can’t wait to see what Julian Schnabel’s [IMDb] next movie Miral [Vimeo] will turn out to be, apart from highly current - as it deals with the Israel / Palestine situation.