The Guilty: NZIFF Review

The Guilty: NZIFF Review

Taut, terrific and twisty, The Guilty's captive setting and lead man make director Gustav Möller's claustrophobic call centre flick one of the most compelling of the festival.

Nearing the end of his potentially last shift, Jakob Cedergren's policeman Asger Holm is a troubled man. With a court appearance the next day, press hounding him, and colleagues clearly less than enamoured with him, Asger appears to simply want to get it done, and move on.

A series of emergency calls come in - each more mundane than the next in his eyes, but each vital to those dialling for the help. Then a call comes in that sets his senses off - an apparent kidnapping.

With the clock ticking in real-time, Asger decides to go back to his policeman roots and try and solve the case....

To say much about The Guilty's reveals is to spoil the elements carefully placed together by Cedergren and director Möller.

Background pieces are trickled through, each dripfed when needed and each naturally inserted into the narrative rather than shoe-horned in. As Asger tries to piece together the kidnapping, the audience is left piecing together him - it's a fascinatingly compelling touch from Möller and one which is wonderfully played by Cedergren's subtleties. The smallest of looks here, the slightest of twitches of behaviour there reveal more than screeds of exposition ever could - and The Guilty sells it right down the line.

Möller also delivers some directorial flair into the setting as well - he refuses initially to show anyone other than Asger in focus, hinting at Asger's perception that others around him are worthy of his time and temperament. Asger himself is never pictured in anything other than close up until it starts to unravel for him - all demonstrating more about character than dialogue would ever achieve.

As a result The Guilty becomes a film that looks like it's destined for a Hollywood remake. Sure, it's got touches of Locke and Buried, but it's also got a panache that's all its own and a sleekness which sets it above many other entries.

Clever, compelling, and character-led, The Guilty is a festival must-see - a stripped back, pared down character piece that's almost Shakespearean in its tragedy. See it now, preferably Hollywood miscasts its lead in its remake.

The Cleaners: NZIFF Review

The Cleaners: NZIFF Review

If you ever wanted a reason to delete your social accounts and reassess your life, The Cleaners is that film.

Distinctly terrifying and definitely a sign of our depressing online times, The Cleaners turns its eye on those who police Facebook and other social channels by following five content moderators who reside in the Philippines and whose job it is to moderate what is out there.

With a daily target of some 25,000 pieces of image content to hit, these drones are understandably dead behind the eyes, their lives dictated by the flickering of the computer screen, the clicking of the mouse, and the soulless utterance of the phrases "Ignore" or "Delete" like some kind of zombie line control monsters.

"We're just like policemen," one of them intones as they enter a faceless building to begin a thankless task of poring over beheadings, nudity, child pornography and other deviant material posted.

What directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck choose to do with this piece though is to scatter their stories (and their limited backgrounds) with those who want the material to be seen.

So a painting of a Trump picture with a small penis that went viral is approached from both sides - the moderator tonelessly reveals why it was removed and the artist who believes it's freedom of speech presents their case thousands of miles away.

What The Cleaners doesn't do is pass judgement - and maybe from time to time, it would be wise to see the decisions questioned and the higher-ups interviewed.

Certainly in cases where children's bodies are depicted washed up on the shores and where a very famous Vietnam picture is talked about being removed because of nudity and gentialia, there becomes a meatier debate to be had - but the directors don't seem to want to dive into it, which is a frustration, but a sign of the depressing world we appear to now inhabit.

There's plenty of debate to be had here, and perhaps the intention is to start some kind of discordant discussion, a rumination on what the big media players are doing to stifle free speech and how content moderators can't really be the last line of defence - especially when cultural differences are the major stumbling block and a one-size-fits-all mentality just doesn't wash.

Bleak in many ways, psychologically depressing for anyone who uses social media or deals with communities, The Cleaners maybe goes a little too skin deep on the implications for free speech and lets off the moderators who strongly believe "Algorithms can't do what we do."

A sobering story of electronics and social media over-taking the world we inhabit and the morals we should hold dear, The Cleaners is perhaps one of the most terrifying portraits of 21st Century online life ever committed to the screen.

Searching: NZIFF Review

Searching: NZIFF Review

Cast: John Cho, Debra Messing, Joseph Lee, Michelle La
Director: Aneesh Chaganty

Searching taps into the digital world we live in and the price we pay for living online.

A solid and empathetic Cho stars as David Kim, whose life is changed when his daughter goes missing. As he tries desperately to track her down, with the help of a detective (Will and Grace star Debra Messing). he discovers he knows little to nothing about who his daughter really is...

Searching has a gimmick - it's a smart digital film thriller played out with everything unfolding via a computer screen. Admittedly, the contrivances come piled high in the back third of the film, threatening to topple the house of cards that's piled high, but there's a lot to digest beforehand.

Chaganty opens with a clever digital montage of the family, a reminder of how much we catalogue online these days, and how computers are so much about our memories as well as the RAM within. In many ways, it's a digitised version of the opening of Up, but for the Facebook generation.

If the gimmick is smartly executed by digital native Chaganty, it's also humanised by Cho's performance. Anchored with a turn that's both empathetic and gripping, Cho's desperation feels real as he plays off a screen and Face time conversations. The anguish etched on his face is never over-played, and he holds the story strongly.

Chaganty spins the thread as far as he can, but the back stages of the film feel like they have piled up the coincidences a little too highly, and while the smarter technical edges have reminiscences of Kristen Stewart's Personal Shopper, Searching always constantly feels gripping when it needs to.

An outlandish twist seals the deal for Searching, but that aside, the film's desire to provide an emotional rollercoaster for the large part works - it may not be perfect, but it's a thrilling tale of the lengths parents will go to and the cautionary fact we're all slowly becoming disconnected in a digital world.

A Kid Like Jake: NZIFF Review

A Kid Like Jake: NZIFF Review

Wisely steering clear of the hysterics that could come from a drama of trying to place a child in a school that's best for them, director Silas Howard's film version of Daniel Pearle's play is a piece that keeps itself grounded throughout.

Claire Danes and Jim Parsons play parents Alex and Greg, who seem diametrically opposed to their parenting approach - she's uptight, and almost neurotic in his eyes and he's indifferent and calm, to the point of comatose in hers.

Issues are further complicated by their son Jake whose desires extend to cross-dressing, a Disney princess obsession and long tresses as well as dresses which is causing problems when trying to pigeon hole him for future schools.

Inevitably, conflict arises as the parents find the pull of the familial sending them to places they'd not expected to go.

Imbued with a degree of WASP-ish indifference, it's hard to care really about the problems these guys face, something which would usually prove fatal to a drama. But by keeping everything grounded, Howard's manipulation of his actors and their commitment to the cause offers up more than just an insight into parenting choice, but also the deepest of human foibles and trivialities.

As Danes ratchets up the control-freakery, Parsons' laid-back approach threatens to derail everything - this at-times kitchen sink drama does inevitably boil over in one mightily familiar scene to many (parents or otherwise) but rarely, unfortunately, transcends its play-like setting.

However, it scores highly for its common touch, its exploration of doubt and its desire to avoid throwing the kid Jake into the middle; smartly, this works when it should and only occasionally teeters.

Gurrumul: NZIFF Review

Gurrumul: NZIFF Review

Some may not be familiar with Australian musician Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, but this doco may look to change some of that.

Paul Damien Williams' piece follows the history of the Australian artist, whose use of soulful Aborigine tunes and definitive voice captivated a generation back in 2008.

Mixing Indigenous languages and simple music, Gurrumul's success was guaranteed, but what came with it was something more than perhaps blind musician Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu actually wanted.

Williams' piece is somewhat confined by the fact that the reclusive Gurrumul was no fan of talking to the media - not out of arrogance or indignance, as an early interview shows, but more out of discomfort.

Despite being gently persuaded to try and engage, Gurrumul stands his ground, preferring to let the music speak for itself, and partly staying true to his reclusive nature. It hampers what Williams may have set out to do, but what it does do, as it's forced in another direction is to promote the enigma and mystery of Gurrumul.

Fans include the likes of Sting, Elton John and Bjork - none of whom are included here, as Williams doesn't wish to pursue a hagiography of the man.

Equally, even though Gurrumul was photographed with the likes of Obama and was a star at the Australian music awards, Williams' piece reveals the pain he felt over being about to break the American market, and the disconnect the idea of fame offered compared to his Indigenous roots.

It's this touch which allows Williams to show more of Gurrumul's background, his life on Elcho Island and why his sense of community and connection to the land was more important than the possibility of fame.

The end result is humbling and while it may be frustrating to some given how the usual biographical documentaries handle their subjects, this spiritual piece talks of tolerance, tradition and offers treats.

Eye-opening in some ways, and a window into another cultural world, Gurrumul insight into cultures is its sole MO, with the music and life of the man very much being a much needed and intriguing extra insight.

Birds of Passage: NZIFF Review

Birds of Passage: NZIFF Review

Mining thematically similar edges to 2016's NZIFF entrant, Embrace of The Serpent, director Ciro Guerra's Birds of Passage takes a very familiar story and piles it through a prism of spiritualism, tribal ways and never-seen-before customs.

Much like Embrace of the Serpent's Amazonian world fell apart from the entrance of strangers, so too does the Colombian world of Zaida and her family. Freed after a year imprisoned in a hut, Zaida's courted by Rapayet, who's rebuffed by her family for having no wealth, and unable to afford her dowry.

However, Rapayet meets some members of the US Peace Corp who are in the region (the first hint of incursions ruining culture) and who are after marijuana. Partnering up with a volatile friend, Rapayet discovers the wealth in the marijuana, and sets in motion a chain of events which threatens both their indigenous ways and their own family values.

Guerra's Birds of Passage is a slow watch, a slow-burning intensely interesting take on an overly familiar story of how drugs - and drink - destroy and how feuds are started in the most insidious of ways.

What Guerra and fellow director Cristina Gallego have done is to take the very rote stories and give them a new spin. Thematically familiar to Embrace of the Serpent ie corrupting influence of outsiders, Birds of Passage takes a overly used drugs story trope and files it through a spiritual prism for maximum effect..

The matriarch (very similar to Animal Kingdom's Jackie Weaver) puts a lot of spiritual edge on what's going on early on, leading to Rapayet almost scoffing at her thoughts and superstitions.

But the further into the marijuana mire he goes, the more he comes to realise the portents she'd talked about were true and how the inevitability cannot be avoided.

Split into four chapters and four time zones, complete with a final song, and blessed with some truly deeply rooted performances, Birds of Passage takes you into the world of the Wayuu and their cultures with no prior knowledge needed of what they are. These are universal tales of corruption, of power struggles and of innocence caught in a cross fire that's unnecessary and yet unavoidable.

Packed with a cultural power, and blessed with a tragedy that's all too familiar, Birds of Passage becomes a film that elevates itself as it goes on - it may be slow at times, and could potentially have lost some of its 2 hour run time, but the wonder of what transpires is in line with Guerra's consistent themes of colonialism corrupting indigenous people, of how the white man has effectively ruined lives in the most insidious of ways without even trying and of how families fracture when the most human of sins rear their ugly heads.

Leave No Trace: NZIFF Review

Leave No Trace: NZIFF Review

Cast: Ben Foster, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie
Director: Debra Granik

A strong piece about deep connection, a symbiotism and subsequent disconnection, Granik's follow up to Winter's Bone is mesmerising in its minimalism.

McKenzie and Foster play father and daughter, Tom and Will. We first encounter them walking through the woods, and it soon becomes clear that this is where they live - to outsiders, it's less than idyllic, but for this pair, who seem unnaturally close, it's perfection.

Certainly for Tom, it appears to be all she's known - but all that changes when she's accidentally seen one day by a passer-by and authorities are alerted.

The pair are picked up by social services, and it's here problems develop for the father and daughter.

To say more about the adaptation of Peter Rock's 2009 book My Abandonment is to spoil what unfurls - and certainly, there's more of an air of mystery in this piece that eats away at you as the film goes on.

Hints are dropped both in moments of dialogue but also in actions - primarily via Foster's edginess, and the decision not to reveal everything immediately. It's this pervasive sense of mystery which soaks through Leave No Trace's DNA which makes such a rewarding watch.

What Granik achieves is a feeling of capturing the margins of society in hints rather than direct exposition and action. Coupled with two naturalistic turns from Foster and McKenzie, the film's power lies in its stillness and its sense of connection.

Initially, everything seems fine between the father and daughter - and the film's suspicions are raised by societal obsessions over motivations of why they live in the woods. It's notable that everything that goes wrong in this is due to external circumstances and intrusions - and certainly Foster's performance of internalised pain and struggle is deeply affecting.

Equally, McKenzie's turn as Tom is something else. She manages to affect great subtle change in Tom's arc, and her journey feels like the full gamut has been reached by the end. However, her confusion, occasional fiery burns, and her strength are key traits to Tom, never once overplayed and ultimately deeply empathetic.

While the film's suffused in mystery, the bond is resolutely human and co-dependant in many ways.

"How important are their judgments" is a line uttered early on, but it's one which forms the mantra of what Granik's trying to achieve here - everything is viewed from other's perspective, the inner sanctity of Tom and Will's bond subject to repeated scrutiny, and due to this, ultimately Tom's own scrutiny comes into play, setting in motion a chain of usually normal events that feel loaded with sadness.

Along with the reflection of an America split and marginalised (as briefly glimpsed throughout), Granik's pared back direction and wondrous cinematography helps Leave No Trace gain its growing atmospheric sense of dread.

But yet, Granik is also wise enough to present those from the outside world who interact with the duo as normal people, blessed with both empathy and a desire to help - making their discord and disconnect even more heart-wrenching to endure and watch.

It's compelling in extremis, and executed with such naturalistic edges, that it almost feels intrusive to watch. Very much the antithesis to Captain Fantastic, and although endowed with similar themes, Leave No Trace has a quiet power from beginning to end.

It's wondrous to behold, with much of the apparent coming-of-age tale leaving lots to unpack long after the lights have gone up and Foster and McKenzie's performances have been marvelled at.