Tag Archives: Canberra International Film Festival

CIFF 2014 Reviews – Round 2: Appropriate Behavior, Afterlife, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her & Him, Starred Up

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Alright, time for the second round of reviews for the 2014 Canberra International Film Festival. I know I said it’d be up on Wednesday, but I’m afraid I had a most insistent migraine that decided I didn’t really need to do anything but take a bunch of painkillers and go to bed that evening. Who am I to tell the migraine no? So painkillers and bed it was. Even better, I couldn’t open my right eye properly the following morning, went to the doctor and found out that I have an eye infection… in the middle of film festival season. Thankfully I got it checked out before it had time to take hold, and it’s not contagious or too serious, with no impairment to my vision, so I’m still able to ride, work and go see the films. So, soldiering on through it. Unfortunately I still had a lot on to work around the festival as well, so this got pushed back further than I’d have liked.

Before I get stuck in though, I wanted to talk about something real quick. I was thinking the other day about what it is I love about film festivals. Interestingly enough, the biggest thing for me isn’t the films (though obviously they’re a pretty damn important part of it), rather it’s the people I meet. End up sitting next to the right person, strike up a conversation, and you can find out some fascinating stuff. At last year’s Freaky Fridays I met a couple of guys that I’m now hanging out with from time to time, going to the movies with semi-regularly and even helped out with a Tropfest entry by playing a minor role (I got to be a messed up looking vampire, good times!). I met a woman who helped setup the festival years back, and still bump into her at the movies from time to time, leading to plenty of discussions about cinema and what we’ve been watching. Just the other night at the Afterlife screening, I met a guy who comes up from Melbourne for a few weeks every year for the film festival, and had a great chat with him about what we’d both seen so far, as well as talking about the film after it finished. Without something like the festival, odds are that I’d never encounter these people, and I feel like that’d be a real shame. I sometimes have trouble meeting new people, and to have something like this where it can be almost guaranteed that I’m going to share some interests with the people around me really helps boost my confidence to talk to those around me.

Anyway, let’s get started. I’ve got five films to review this time around, but two of them will be reviewed as one due to the way they’re meant to be watched… don’t give me that look, you’ll see what I mean when I get to them. Moving along…

As last time, there may be spoilers, I make no promises, you have been warned. If you want to avoid them entirely except for basic setup spoilers, read the summary of the review, which is shown above the poster for each film. Again, titles link to the CIFF page for each film, which will have a trailer if one is available.

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CIFF 2014 Reviews – Round 1: In Order of Disappearance, Why Don’t You Play In Hell?, The Salvation and The Congress

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Hey hey! The 2014 Canberra International Film Festival started last Thursday, and I’ve been spending most of my free time since then watching movies. I’ve seen seven of the twenty-two (potentially twenty-three) on my schedule so far, and honestly I’ve loved them all. Unlike last year’s aborted attempt, this year I’m determined to review all of them. In the interests of making that manageable, I’ve set a couple of guidelines for myself. I’ll be reviewing them in batches of four films, and limiting myself to five hundred words per film, give or take a hundred words each. I’ll try to avoid major spoilers, but as always with my reviews, there’s no guarantees, so consider this your fair warning. If you want to be really safe, just read the summary I put at the start of each section. I’ll even put the poster for the movie after each summary so you know where to stop reading, so you know, never say I don’t do anything for you.

Now as I always say, I’m no serious film critic. I tend to go pretty easy on films so long as I find something to enjoy in them, and I make no apologies for that. So far this year I haven’t rated any of the films lower than a 4, and I think last year I only rated one of them as a 1 or 2.

Now that the preamble is out-of-the-way, let’s get this show on the road. For Round 1, I’ll be talking about In Order of Disappearance, Why Don’t You Play In Hell, The Salvation and The Congress. Each title is linked to the page for the film on the CIFF website, if a trailer is available for it, you can find it there.

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CIFF Reviews Round One: My Sweet Pepper Land, Ginger & Rosa, Mirage Men

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Well, we’re long past due for the first batch of reviews for the films I saw at the Canberra International Film Festival. Unfortunately I’ve been ill again, and had some personal stuff going on that had essentially killed my motivation to work on anything that required more effort than sitting down on the couch and watching TV or reading a book. Well we’re past that now (not the being sick, I’ve once again got the flu and am also due for a minor medical procedure in a week or so… yay me!), so I’m back into writing. I’ve decided I’m going to do the reviews in order of viewing, so the first ones up are My Sweet Pepper Land, Ginger & Rosa, and Mirage Men. I’m aiming to get these smashed out of the way as quickly as I can, after which I may not post again until I get home from visiting the family at Christmas. All depends on how long it takes I suppose.

Just a reminder, when I do film reviews, I don’t tend to focus on the technical elements and quality of the cinematography (unless it’s a film that is being sold on those elements). I focus on how I felt about it, and the enjoyment I get out of it. I’m not a professional critic, and I’m giving an unabashedly biased review based entirely on my opinion.

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Canberra International Film Festival 2013

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The complaint I hear time and time again from my friends and colleagues about living in Canberra is that there’s nothing to do. This never ceases to amuse me, because when I ask them if they’re going to various events the answer is always “I didn’t know it was on.” I’ve realised that the problem is that they never bother to look to see what’s happening, so they just assume nothing is going on. So I’ve started deliberately looking for upcoming events and passing the information onto my friends and co-workers, and I thought why not expand the audience a bit. We may not get all the huge concerts and so on that Sydney and the other cities get, but we do have a lot worth checking out.

The biggest upcoming event at the moment is the 17th Canberra International Film Festival.

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Soboj ostat’sja dol’she…

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Note: Sorry for the cryptic title of the post. It’s explained further down in the post. I just felt that it sums up my current state of mind and thought patterns pretty well.

Well. My writer’s block continues. Sometimes I wonder if one of these days it’ll start and just never stop again. When I think about the fact that I didn’t write anything for nearly six years, it doesn’t seem that unlikely to me. In the mean time, I try to keep pushing myself to write to try and avoid that outcome. Nothing I’ve written in the last week or so is really worth publishing though. So instead it’s time for a bit more rambling from me.

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