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Film Friday: Business as Usual
We know, we know; you’re bloody sick of reading about films. But the frank fact is that films continue to be released, and, well, you might still want to go and see them in the next week. Quite a lot of stuff has come out, after all!
Top of the list has to be Michel Gondry’s latest, The Science of Sleep. We (and most others) really liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, his previous narrative work, but it seems commentators are less convinced with this. “The Science Of Sleep is Gondry’s first fiction feature without [screenwriter Charlie] Kaufman, and the first to draw on his own script. It must give Kaufman a little glow to know how much he’s missed.” NOW’s Cameron Bailey states, but he does give props to the inventive design; “it’s hard to hate a movie that uses cellophane for water.”
Also out this week are several films which played at the festival, all of which we didn’t bother our arse to go and see. There’s Confetti (“basically just Best in Show with wedding culture substituted for dog-show culture” – Adam Nayman, Eye); All the King’s Men (A new adaptation of a book turned into the 1949 Oscar winner. Why did they bother exactly?); Tales of the Rat Fink (Adam Nayman seems to really like this, but is there anything that sounds stupider than a documentary in which cars talk with celebrity voices?); and Un Dimanche a Kigali (“The film is long, portentous and offensive.” – John Harkness, NOW.)
Oh, on release this week too are Flyboys and Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. They weren’t in the festival. Sucks to be you, films!
One festival this week, the Pomegranate Film Festival, a festival of Armenian film and filmmakers. Quite naturally Atom Egoyan is heavily involved. Starts tonight!