Doc Corner: 'My Love' a Romantic Gem

Glenn here with our weekly look at documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. We're a bit late this week due to internet problems, but we're here now looking at the fan favourite hit, My Love, Don't Cross That River.

The opening shot of Jin Mo-young’s My Love, Don’t Cross That River is one of breathtaking beauty. An elderly woman sits at a grave, the ground and trees covered in snow, her crying a distinctive cut of a knife through the serene nature. If this were a fiction film, people would crow about how artfully it is composed and how even without knowledge of its subject or circumstances it is able to immediately create wells of emotion in the audience. By the time Jin’s film returns to this tableau some 80 minutes later, it does so with the complete story behind it and if the reserved simplicity of it had somehow alluded the viewer in its opening moments then surely the impact will well and truly be made now.

My Love is a film about a marriage. Jo Byeong-man is 98 and Kang Gye-Yeol is 89, and the pair who met when she was just 14 have been married for 76 years. Without that opening shot foreshadowing events to come, one might struggle through the opening half of Jin’s movie which captures the pair in almost unbearably cute form as they play child-like games while doing yard work, wear matching colourful silk outfits on day trips, pick flowers, and take care of their dogs (one of which is named Freebie because, well, he was free). But when Jo becomes increasingly sick, the film takes on a deeper resonance as Kang must confront the inevitability that she will be alone for the first time in nearly eight decades.

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Warcraft. What were they thinking?

Six questions that trouble me still from the Warcraft screening last week...

What on earth does Glenn Close need the money for?"

For some reason they only hired sexy men to play these monsters

That's just one of many questions I screamed into the abyss whilst watching this expensive, silly, over-stuffed but under-nourished video game adaptation. What's more this was only one of about 7 questions I screamed to which no answers came in a single scene of the movie. I couldn't even begin to tell you what was going on other than it was important enough to precede the climax of the movie. But I'll try. A young sorcerer (Ben Schnetzer) enters some sort of black gooey CGI cube and meets some sort of anthropomorphized supernatural force with sounds just like Glenn Close and finally looks just like Glenn Close as it solidifies and turns to camera upon which she/it/they bestow(s) on the young sorcerer some sort of magic that they've been withholding from some sort of bureaucrat mystics association so that he can return to battle another sorcerer to become "The Guardian" of the world of Azeroth where this all takes place...and that's not even the A plot!

The A plot is slightly less confusing...

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Sydney Film Festival: Tickled

Josh reporting on a hot find at the Sydney Film Festival.

When the credits rolled at the screening of Tickled at the Sydney Film Festival, the frantic dumbstruck reaction from the audience was palpable. You could see everyone turning to each other, wide eyed and picking their jaws up from the floor. The proceeding Q&A with the filmmakers had hands flying into the air with exasperated questions. And all this from a documentary about tickling!

Directed by Dylan Reeve and David Farrier, the latter who is also front and centre in the film, the film unravels the bizarre and gripping story surrounding Jane O’Brien Media and its non-monetised website generating videos of young athletic men tickling each other.

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Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping

Eric here, with a quick review of the new movie from The Lonely Island comedy trio of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping.  

Pop Star is one of those films, like Anchorman or Zoolander, that gives you two choices:  surrender or resist.  You can either dive headfirst into this mockumentary of pop music sensation Conner4Real, and enjoy a hodgepodge of hit-or-miss jokes…or you can yawn at the filmmakers calling in a favor to every famous person they know (Carrie Underwood, Adam Levine, Usher, etc.) to lend some authenticity to the piece. 

If you resist, Pop Star is probably a pretty unbearable sit, because it’s another movie from producer Judd Apatow that features a bunch of male comedy guys conning a studio out of about $30 million just so they can show the world (and themselves) how adorably imbecilic but ultimately likable they are.  While the film itself is about an egomaniac, there’s a lingering ickiness about the ego behind and in front of the camera too.  The film purports to skewer rap star narcissism, but the behavior is celebrated as often as it’s parodied. 

But if you surrender, the laughs deliver...

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Doc Corner: Mayles' In Transit is a Stunning Achievement

Glenn here. Each Tuesday we bring you reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. This week we look at the final work of Albert Maysles, In Transit.

Last week we looked at Chantal Akerman's final film, and this week completely by accident I am reviewing another final film by another towering name in documentary filmmaking. In a career that includes Grey Gardens, Salesman, Gimme Shelter, and Monterey Pop, Albert Maysles has made many films that are considered among the greatest non-fiction titles ever made. And while last year’s glimpse into the life of aging fashion icon Iris Apfel, Iris, was billed as his last work, it is in fact this deeply searching piece of cinema verite made in collaboration with Lynn True, David Usui, Nelson Walker III, and Benjamin Wu that is his last work and an incredibly fitting one, too. It’s the work of a documentarian unmistakably trying to grasp as much experience in the world and revel in the unique people and share it with audiences before its too late.

The beginning of In Transit informs us that the Empire Builder is America’s longest and busiest passenger rail, constantly shuffling people between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest. The roaming cameras latch onto individuals just long enough to hear their story before moving on over its brisk 76-minute runtime and few are offered more than a few minutes of screen time at most. [more...]

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