Tuesday, September 24, 2013

A Moveable Fest, Week 6: Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, A Fistful of Dollars, Primer, Blood Simple, Turn Me On Dammit

I did this at my home town a fair bit too.
Week 6 : Tim's Choice
(We went a bit overboard this week and ended up watching 5 films. What else are you supposed to do while waiting for the next Breaking Bad?)

Thunderbolt & Lightfoot

Clint Eastwood's getting the band back together (for a repeat robbery, given they can't find the cash from the original heist), and Jeff Daniels is the nicest sidekick on earth. "I don't wish to be forward, but we'd like to exchange cars with you. So the faster you get out, the better it'll be for your ass." Car chases, robberies, and really floral pants! While we were watching this I drank many G&Ts and consequently fell asleep around half an hour before the end. Tim can fill you in.

A Fistful Of Dollars

A Poncho With No Name rides into town and plays two warring families off against each other to make some cashola. Dusty, violent, and squinty, with an approved level of whistling. Samurai stories seem to translate really well into Westerns for some reason - perhaps the notion of the anonymous wandering stranger looking for a bit of action suits its widescreen landscape. "My mistake. Four coffins."

Primer

Dudes build a time machine, then things get complicated. I watched Primer a while ago after it was screened at MIFF one year, but found it completely incomprehensible. On re-watch, I discovered this was because the copy I was watching had such bad sound that I had assumed the characters were meant to be mumbling their way through the entire film. The scene where they're having a conversation next to a noisy fountain? My entire copy sounded like that. So I was pleasantly surprised to be able to piece together most of Primer together this time around, even though my appreciation of the last ten minutes or so is mainly limited to "that man needed to go to that place because of time". As Tim said to me, it's bizarre to read reviews that insist you have to be a scientist to make any sense of this movie. How on earth will they deal with Orlando?

Blood Simple

Marty thinks Abby is cheating on him (he's right), and hires a private detective to spy on and kill her and her lover. In traditional Cohen fashion, then things go a bit crazy: add many double/triple crosses and stir until the plot thickens. Despite being a Cohen fan I'd managed to miss out on this one. Neo-noirish (though Abby is more femme inconsciente than femme fatale) and blackly humorous, with some excellently squirmy gory scenes. Gets my vote for "best method of extricating trapped hand" on film.

Turn Me On, Dammit

Alma know what she wants, the trouble lies in the practicality of getting it. Frequent calls to the sex line aren't cutting it, but when her school crush Artur awkardly pokes her leg with his penis outside the school dance (and then denies it), the whole school and her friends turn on the now-nicknamed "Dick Alma". Awkward, sweet and funny - this film reminded me of the tone of Lukas Moodysson's lovely Show Me Love (and not just because both sets of teenagers hate their small home town). When I see YA films like this, and others in MIFF's Next Gen program each year, it annoys me that these films never see release in Australia. When there are such good YA films being made across the globe, why are we doomed only to the kind of romance that comes with Transformers or Twilight? Alma would flip them the bird.








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