solace in cinema : A vast wasteland of movies

The LFF kicks off tonight (a gala screening of ‘Eastern promises’) so I thought I should really get my shit together and write up some reviews of what i’ve seen so far…. this is the first post of many.

I’m thinking a good way to rate these rather than ’stars’ is to tell you how long the films are in actual running time, and how long they felt like to sit through. I’ve sat through 80 minutes films that felt like 3 hours of tedium, but on the other hand I sat through 3 hour films that flew by.

California Dreamin’
Dir: Cristian Nemescu

California Dreamin’ was the film that they kicked off the press screenings with, and a good choice it was. An excellent Romanian comedy-drama about a team of American soldiers escorting military cargo on a train through to Kosovo, but when the train is held up by a bolshy self-important station master… Hilarity Ensues. I really enjoyed California Dreamin’, it was well constructed, funny and touching without being trite and melodramatic. The Romanian actors were great without exception and it was very cool to Armand Assante back on the screen in a role he was obviously born for.

Rating: California Dreamin’ was 2 hours 35 minutes long, but felt like 90 minutes.

You can check out my full review of this film here and another review written by my friend Mike here

Book tickets here

Island of Lost Souls
Dir: Nikolaj Arcel

I already talked a bit about ‘The Island of Lost Souls’, and while it started out feeling a bit like a high-budget kids tv show, it really brought me around quite quickly. It’s quite east to tout ‘Island of Lost Souls’ as the Danish Harry Potter, but I think it has more going for it than that. It was a really well rounded fantasy film, with magical kids, creepy scarecrows, and lots of body swapping. Apparently the film was slammed in Denmark for being to americanised, but I still felt a strong Scandinavian storytelling influence while watching it, and think it’s done its country proud

A great film to take the kids too…

Rating: ‘Island of Lost Souls’ was 1 hour 40 minutes, but felt like 1 hour 10.

Book tickets here

Hannah take the Stairs
Dir: Joe Swanberg

‘mumblecore‘ is a term I was born to hate, and ‘Hannah takes the Stairs’ did nothing to placate me. I can handle and sometimes even enjoy really low production values when it comes to visuals, but it just means the script and the acting will have to work a lot harder to make up for its shortcomings elsewhere. ‘Hannah’ didn’t do that. I think Richard Linklater sewed up the ‘20-somethings over analysing everything around them’ genre in the early to mid 90’s but the difference being most of his characters are likable. I really didn’t like any of the characters in ‘Hannah’ and just wanted them to all get the fuck on with it so I didn’t have to watch them moan anymore. Oh look i’m wacky… oh yeah I’m confused about my relationship… oh I don’t know where my life is going. Kill me now.

Rating: ‘Hannah takes the Stairs’ was only 84 minutes but felt like 3+ hours

Book tickets here

Valzer
Dir: Salvatore Maira

Valzer follows a hotel clerk around as her job and her day unfolds. We meet new characters that come and go as the stories roll out piece by piece and the one continuous shot explores the people and situations. Technically I thought ‘Valzer’ was a really interesting film, the ‘all in one shot’ film is nothing new and was well handled by Hitchcock in ‘Rope’ (actually not all one shot, I know pedants, don’t email me) and was deftly controlled here, switching between characters and paths as they wander the corridors of a hotel over the space of a day and occasionally lapse into flashbacks within the same spaces. Ultimately the thing that let ‘Valzer’ down for me was the story, if you’re going to do a film in one continuous shot you need a cracking story but because the script was just a bit flat no amount of technical achievement was going to improve it. ‘Valzer’ isn’t a terrible film, but the fact that I had to look it up on IMDB to remind myself what it was after only seeing it a week ago should tell you something.

Valzer was 87 minutes but felt like 100

Book tickets here

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 8:25 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.