The second Thursday of BIFF was a triumph of good choices after a couple of disappointments earlier in the week and weekend.
Movie #11 was Prince Avalanche. A small indie movie which seems to be the best Wes Anderson movie that Wes Anderson never made. Paul Rudd plays an uptight middle aged guy called Alvin who has taken on a contract to fix roads ruined by large fires in the woods of Texas in 1988. It's a lonely life camping out in the wilderness overnight and painting lines/fixing posts by day. He takes on his girlfriend's oddball younger brother Lance (Emile Hirsche from Speed Racer/Into the Wild) for company and to help with the work.
This movie is really S-L-O-W but charming and beautiful. There are some amazing shots of the natural environment and some really contemplative scenes as Alvin is the type of guy who can just be comfortable on his own out in the middle of nowhere enjoying his hobbies. This leads to the occasional clash with Lance, who like many young people these days cannot handle doing nothing. He ventures back into town at the weekends to party and the discussions with Alvin about this are gently comedic.
Gentle, slow moving and odd but charming would be the best way to describe this. One for fans of director David Gordon Green's "All the Real Girls" not his slacker comedies "Your Highness" or "Pineapple Express".
Movie #12 was Rigor Mortis. Our supernatural horror movie faith is restored after the disastrous mess of "Sapi" earlier in the week. A Hong Kong film paying tribute to Chinese TV series "Mr Vampire" in Japanese style. Way cool! You don't need to be familiar with the Chinese show to appreciate this film at all though. This is one we will be chasing up to own on DVD for it's dark and cool visuals married with an almost steampunk setting reminiscent of Guillermo del Toro.
The film opens with retired actor Sui Ho moving into an abandoned apartment in a scary looking apartment block, following the separation from his wife and young son. Depressed, he tries to take his own life, but is saved at the last minute by Yau (a Taoist priest who is trying to retire from vampire hunting) who senses that depression is not the only reason - Ho has been possessed by the evil spirits of two girls who previously died in the apartment. Ho recovers and meets the various residents of his apartment building who gather in Yau's excellent food hall. Auntie May the seamstress lives with her beloved husband Uncle Tung, the building caretaker Yin seems unperturbed by spooky events, Kau is a mysterious healer who may dabble in the Black Arts, and weird Feung is a seemingly crazy lady hanging around outside Ho's apartment with her albino son. There are also some ghostly residents.
While spooky from the get-go, events escalate when Tung meets with an accident and May cannot handle losing her lifelong husband. She works with Kau to bring Tung back to life, but his renewed self is not the expected outcome and it puts all the residents of the building in grave danger. Ho and Yau must band together with Kau to stop a major bloodbath from the now vampiric Tung and the aforementioned evil spirits.
The movie is well plotted, well acted, and the visuals are quite stunning. The graphic violence, body horror and suicide scenes will disturb sensitive viewers but if you can handle it, this is a really cool film with a bit of a headscratcher of an ending that will keep you thinking.
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