SIFF 2019: Kifaru (***1/2)

May 25, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 1, 2019)

I haven’t cried like this over an animal movie since I saw Old Yeller as a kid. But there’s a palpable sadness running throughout David Hambridge’s extraordinarily moving documentary about the life and death of “Sudan”, the last male white rhino. The film is as much about his dedicated caretakers James and JoJo, workers at Kenya’s Ol Pejeta wildlife conservancy. Thankfully, we are given hope for the future (thanks to the miracles of modern science).

Cult Movie, Musical, Rock 'n' Roll

SIFF 2019: The Legend of the Stardust Brothers (**)

May 25, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 25, 2019)

Billed as “a lost gem of 1980s Japanese cinema”, this alleged cult film is an example of why some lost gems are perhaps best-left “lost” (you know…like Bilbo’s goddam ring). Then again, perhaps I wasn’t in the right mood (or under the influence of the right “enhancement”) to experience the sway it apparently holds over some midnight movie enthusiasts. Granted, there are moments of campy fun in this tale of a new wave duo’s rise and fall, but overall it’s a psychedelic train wreck. The original songs are gratingly awful…kind of a deal breaker for a musical.

Drama, Politics, Up the Workers, War

SIFF 2019: I Am Cuba (****)

May 25, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 1, 2019)

There is a tendency to dismiss this 1964 film about the Cuban revolution as Communist propaganda. Granted, it was produced with the full blessing of Castro’s regime, who partnered with the Soviet government to provide the funding for director Mikhail Kalatozov’s sprawling epic. Despite the dubious backers, the director was given a surprising amount of creative freedom.

On the surface, Kalatozov’s film is in point of fact a propagandist polemic; the narrative is divided into a quartet of rhetoric-infused vignettes about exploited workers, dirt-poor farmers, student activists, and rebel guerrilla fighters.

However it is also happens to be a visually intoxicating masterpiece that, despite accolades from critics over the decades, remains relatively obscure. The real stars of the film are the director and his technical crew, who will leave you pondering how they produced some of those jaw-dropping set pieces and logic-defying tracking shots!

Documentary, Road Movie

SIFF 2019: Eastern Memories (**)

May 25, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 25, 2019)

Using excerpts from 100 year-old journals by Finnish linguist G.J. Ramstedt as a narrative, directors Niklas Kullstrom and Martti Kaartinen retrace his experiences in two countries. He was sent to Mongolia to study and compile a written record of the language, then was later assigned to a diplomatic post in Japan-where he studied the Korean language (I know-a little confusing).

While his studies were primarily academic, his journals reflected a more subjective take on the geography and people of the respective countries. The directors juxtapose Ramstedt’s century-old musings with modern travelogues of the locations he wrote about. Despite the intriguing premise, the film is deadly dull in execution-not helped by dry and perfunctory narration.

Behind the Music, Documentary

SIFF 2019: Who Let the Dogs Out? (***)

May 25, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)

Who let the dogs out? Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn, because I have hated that tuneless ear worm since I first heard it in 2000. That said, my opinion holds no sway in the grand scheme, because it remains one of the most ubiquitous anthems of the last 20 years.

For me, the biggest question is: “Why?” However, for “cultural curator” Ben Sisto the nagging question is “Who?” …as in, who actually wrote the song? Triggered by a “sloppy” Wikipedia entry regarding authorship of the Baha Men’s one-hit-wonder, Sisto went on an 8-year quest to solve the mystery. As Sisto runs the chalk backwards, the story becomes curiouser and curiouser; both Roshomon-style mystery and treatise on the objective psyche.

60's Counterculture, Behind the Music, Documentary, Rock 'n' Roll

SIFF 2019: David Crosby: Remember My Name (***1/2)

May 25, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)

David Crosby marvels aloud in A.J. Eaton’s film that he’s still above ground …as do we. Cameron Crowe produced this doc, edited from several days of candid interviews he conducted with the 77 year-old music legend. Crosby relays all: the sights, the sounds, the smells of six decades of rock ‘n’ roll excess. I was left contemplating this bittersweet line from Almost Famous: “You’ll meet them all again on the long journey to the middle.”

Documentary

SIFF 2019: Honeyland (***)

May 25, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)

Filmmakers Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska spent three years documenting the daily hard-scrabble life of Hatidze Muratova, a “bee hunter” who lives in the Balkans. She supports herself and her elderly mother by selling raw honey to local village merchants. When a family of Turkish itinerant farmers sets up camp next door, the delicate and carefully cultivated balance of her bee colony’s productivity is potentially threatened. A unique meditation on human nature…and on nature itself.

Conspiracy a-go-go, Politics, Thriller

SIFF 2019: The Realm (*1/2)

May 24, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 1, 2019)

In this conspiracy thriller, a low-level Spanish politician becomes an unwitting fall guy for the systemized corruption in his district. He decides to blow the whistle on his backstabbing colleagues before he is forced to resign his post. It’s a good premise and has a promising start, but the narrative becomes more and more preposterous, to the point of self-parody. I sensed the film makers were aiming for Three Days of the Condor…but unfortunately what they ended up with was this 2-hour turkey.

Eco-doc

SIFF 2019: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (***)

May 20, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)

Co-directors Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky put the band back together for this update on their cautionary 2007 eco-doc Manufacturing Landscapes. In my original review of that film, I likened the photographic imagery to “…a scroll through Google Earth images as reinterpreted by Jackson Pollock or M.C. Escher”. I’m sad to report there’s been little improvement on humankind’s mistreatment of our planet-as evidenced by this likewise visually striking and equally sobering document.

War

SIFF 2019: Monos (****)

May 20, 2019 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2019)

Lord of the Flies meets Aguirre: The Wrath of God in this trippy war drama. A squad of teenage South American guerilla fighters undergo intense training for an unspecified contemporary conflict. Initially, it’s just a game to them; but after a bloody skirmish, they rebel against their adult commander and flee into the dense mountain jungle with a female American hostage in tow. Brutal, visceral, and one-of-a-kind. It’s the Apocalypse Now of child soldier films.