NZ International Film Festival: Tom Augustine of the movies that moved him (and the ones that made him mad)

Animals, a spirited and delightful ode to female friendship.

It's a symptom of seeing an excessive amount at the NZ International Film Festival that most offerings coalesce somewhere in the middle; not bad, but not quite good enough to cut through the noise and stick with you. This year, there have been several that have jumped to either side of the spectrum - the stunningly good and the howlingly bad. Here are some of those from my second week at the NZIFF.

AMAZING GRACE (dir. Alan Elliott, Sydney Pollack, Rated G)
Without a doubt one of the finest films of the year, this astonishing documentary rescued from certain doom by a dedicated team of preservationists reveals the images captured during the recording of Aretha Franklin's iconic live gospel album, "Amazing Grace". Featuring more spine-tingling moments of transcendence than you could wave a microphone at, Amazing Grace documents the finest soul singer of all time at the height of her powers, in ways uplifting and profoundly moving. It was the most spiritual experience I've had in a cinema in years, simply watching her sing.
RATING: Five stars.

ANIMALS (dir. Sophie Hyde, Rated R16)
Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde (52 Tuesdays) delivers a spirited and utterly delightful ode to female friendship with Animals, an Irish co-production about the messy, wild lives of two young women living in Dublin and slowly drifting apart. Actors Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat are stunning in the lead roles, lending a real chemistry and feeling of shared history. Coupled with a script packed full of crackling dialogue and strong direction, Animals is a modern dramedy that parallels its good humour with welcome substance.
RATING: Four stars.

DEERSKIN (dir. Quentin Dupieux, Rated R16)
It's hard to imagine I'll see a film I liked less than French provocateur Quentin Dupieux' Deerskin, a smug, self-satisfied little slice of nastiness ostensibly taking aim at the violent tendencies of toxic masculinity while simultaneously attempting to revel in them. Stretching a one-joke concept that would barely work as a short film to feature length, the film features Jean Dujardin at his most odious as a middle-aged man who develops a psychotic relationship with his newly acquired deerskin jacket. Deerskin has far less to say than it thinks it does, and that's before it devolves into cheap slasher mode toward the end.
RATING: One-and-a-half stars.

HIGH LIFE (dir. Claire Denis, Rated R16)
One of the most unique and celebrated of all living auteurs, the brilliant French filmmaker Claire Denis' latest is a sure-to-be divisive, oblique bit of cerebral science fiction detailing a crew of death-row inmates on a suicide mission into a black hole. Denis' trademark style and fascinations with the manual functions of the body - our decay, our ability to bring life, our fluids and our instincts - consistently subvert expectations in ways that are at times beguiling, other times intentionally off-putting. The existential moodiness of High Life clung to my mind long after I left the cinema.
RATING: Four stars.

Manta Ray, a lush drama about friendship.

MANTA RAY (dir. Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, Rated M)
Coupled with the (also spectacular) Long Day's Journey Into Night, there's been plenty of probing of dreamscapes at this year's Festival. With Manta Ray, Thai filmmaker Phuttiphong Aroonpheng follows in the footsteps of that other great Thai auteur, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives), to create this lucid, lush drama about a friendship formed between a Thai fisherman and the Rohingya refugee he rescues from a mangrove swamp. Evocatively filmed and fascinatingly structured, the film is a peaceful, somnambulant experience that interrogates the treacherous ground refugees must walk to find a safe-haven, and how easily that haven can be taken away. An under-the-radar must-see.
RATING: Five stars.

TAKE ME SOMEWHERE NICE (dir. Ena Sendijarevec, Rated M)
A wonderfully offbeat roadtrip film set in Bosnia, this debut feature from Ena Sendijarevec is a small-scale delight, and an under-the-radar glimpse at what is sure to be a promising career. With shades of Jim Jarmusch and Wes Anderson, among others, Take Me Somewhere Nice is the story of a young Dutch woman who travels across Bosnia with her cousin and his friend in search of her father. Acidically funny, sexy and energetic, Take Me Somewhere Nice is a surefire addition to the 'kids on the road' canon.
RATING: Four-and-a-half stars.

BACURAU (dir. Kleber Mendonca Filho, Juliano Dornelles, Rated R16)
A tense, lurid slice of social commentary from the Brazilian filmmakers behind Aquarius and Neighbouring Sounds offers a speculatory glimpse of the country a few years down the road under the management of its new far right leadership. Bacurau explores a small indigenous village of the same name who become more and more concerned as strange, violent occurrences begin piling up on the outskirts of town. Filmmakers Filho and Dornelles manage a large cast with deftness and clarity, building to a gloriously bloody showdown whose twists are far too good to give away. A resonant, relevant good time.
RATING: Four stars.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Tom Augustine's pick of the NZIFF.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (dir. Celine Sciamma, Rated M)
The best film I've seen at the Festival this year is this genuinely masterful work by French filmmaker Celine Sciamma, building on her previous successes in Girlhood and Water Lillies with this stately, seductive film detailing the romance that blossoms between a young eighteenth-century bride-to-be and the woman hired to paint her portrait for her prospective husband. Simmering emotion and exquisitely mounted drama follow, with Sciamma's sense of control and almost supernatural ability to evoke oceans of feeling in the slightest of glances drawing the audience into its heaving, aching sense of longing until it becomes almost too much to bear. The final twenty minutes of this film are nothing short of brilliant - cathartic, heart-rending, poetic. A masterpiece.
RATING: Five stars.

It Must be Heaven, one of the stand-outs from this year's NZ International Film Festival.

IT MUST BE HEAVEN (dir. Elia Suleiman, Rated PG)
A sweet, melancholic little piece from Palestinean filmmaker Elia Suleiman, this film stars the director as himself (in a role with echoes of Jacques Tati's M. Hulot), an almost completely silent observer watching the world unfold around him in all its messiness and beauty. Almost completely devoid of plot, It Must Be Heaven instead employs an easy-going, almost episodic structure with some fascinating juxtapositions and a quietly beating political heart. Splashes of absurdist comedy that recall the work of Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson draw the viewer in so that this quiet, meandering film is never anything less than totally engaging.
RATING: Four-and-a-half stars.