50 first dates

by Peter Segal

comedy / romance

2004, USA

I like this film. Watched it more than once but actually never blogged about it. No idea why actually. It's such a sweet and moving one!

If you need a feel good film, pick this one.

I'm not much of a fan of Adam Sandler, never have been. I do have a soft spot for Drew Barrymore and that was the reason for choosing this film.

So, Lucy suffers from short-memory loss since an accident she had. She knows everything until the accident and nothing from after that. She forgets everything about the day over night. So when Henry's falling for her he will have to win her heart every single day again. Sounds corny, right. It is... But we all want a little corny now and then.

The film has a lot of funny moments but under that, there's love and a serious tone as well. And  there's so much chemistry between the main characters. Besides that I love how her dad and brother in the film make everything seem the same every day again and want to protect her. And Henry... I think it's funny how he falls for a woman who doesn't remember him the next day, while he never wanted commitment himself and forgot about every tourist he dated as soon as she leaves the island again. And I love how Henry's changing more and more in the film... and shows his care in so many ways.

Technically it might not be the best film you have ever seen and there are some flaws, but forget about that and I think you will enjoy this one just as much as I did. It just is very moving to see someone falling in love over and over again.

The Iron Lady

by Phyllida Lloyd
drama / biography
2011, UK / France


Very interesting film.

Now, I'm not British and I didn't live in the UK and I also was pretty young as Thatcher started her political career. I didn't go through this chapter of political history from nearby. But I guess we all do have that vision of a powerful lady on our minds when hearing her name. She was one of the famous world leaders, if you liked her or not.

Thatcher absolutely was a character in her political days, such a strong woman for her time, so independent, all principles, no compromises, putting her political career first before her family life, being so strong in a time where a woman just wasn't present so much in the big picture yet. I must say I do admire her for that.

Of course there are good sides and lesser sides to that. And I can imagine that she had as much people who liked and who disliked her and/or her political ideas. She was rather controversial, especially for those years.

The filmmaker choose for a different perspective than I had expected when first hearing about the film. We meet an elderly lady who goes to the nearest grocery store to buy a pint of milk. Back home again she starts complaining to her husband about the price of the milk... The elderly lady turns out to be Margaret Thatcher. Her husband however is long deceased so she is in another dimension of life, her own little world. Through this we get flashbacks on her life from childhood through her political life until now.
Maybe the filmmaker choose this perspective to avoid too much criticism and not to choose sides too much (a bit safe), but I do think it's interesting that the film showed more her human sides than her political sides.
That said, I don't know much about Thatcher's present life so I don't know how she is doing in reality. I still don't know what to think of the focus of the film from the older lady suffering from her declining health (Alzheimer). I'm sure they were looking for some kind of portray of the human side towards being 'the iron lady' but still... it felt a bit awkward. And as the focus was mostly on this, the remarkable lady she once was a little snowed under and the film didn't give much insight about her political life.

Meryl Streep is awesome in her role as Margaret Thatcher. Even if I have seen Streep in various roles and admire her, not for one minute I had her in mind... she was Thatcher all over!

I loved Jim Broadbent in the role of her older husband Dennis Thatcher as well. The intimacy between the two was so good.

Interesting film quote:
Watch your thoughts for they become words. Watch your words for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become... habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. And watch your character, for it becomes your destiny! What we think we become. 


So... all in all I had a good time watching this film. It's more an introduction to Margaret Thatcher than a biography and it for sure could have had a bit more depth but it was a tender film about the human side of a remarkable iron lady. 

Shattered

by Xu Tong
China, 2011


from IFFR site:
Xu Tong continues his enervating, sometimes controversial reporting on the morals of the Chinese underclass. In the lead role, an 80-year-old, retired railway worker Tang Xixin, who is visited by his daughter Caifeng (the brothel owner from Fortune Teller, IFFR 2010). They are straight-talking people.

Tang Xixin is a retired railway official who has lost little of his outspoken character at the age of 80. He does not like to receive his adult children in his ramshackle home, but he makes an exception for his daughter Caifeng (who was a guest in Rotterdam last year). She runs a brothel and is involved in equally illegal mining practices. In other words, a woman of the world who tries energetically to keep out of the hands of the law.
Xu Tong films the family the way it is. The old Tang, with his flood of words, is an ideal witness to the 20th century; his daughter is a colourful symbol of the new China. Even though in the views of the state she is undoubtedly far from being a role model. Xu Tong’s intimate, occasionally raw style of filming fits in well with that. He does not make any moral judgement and that makes him controversial in China. The result is nevertheless sincere and authentic.


my thoughts:
A father (Old man Tang) and his daughter (Caifeng) in Heilongjiang province (northeast China). 


Very interesting in this film is the mirror between history and modern China. With photos but moreover with stories. I love it how this eighty year old man keeps talking. You can see he loves to talk but he teaches us a lot about how things were years ago. And even talks about his membership with The Party (which he canceled) and what happened when Mao died. 


And then his daughter... what a couple they form. Both strong persons. Arguing most of the time. And most of the time about nothing and anything. Sometimes hilarious. At other times annoying. 
But she also takes care of him so I suppose they have a warm relationship after all.
She was in prison (illegal brothel) and tells about that. She's still in the underground business but no longer in brothels but in mining. 


Generational conflicts. Family arguments also with other family members. Sexual habits. All very much out in the open. This film offers a very intimate and inside view on family life. 


Also the house is something worth watching, so iconic. I have been in houses like this with walls full of posters and craziness. They are like little Chinese museums.


Oh and again some slaughtering in this film... this time a pig. What is it with Chinese filmmakers that they want us to go through that whole procedure again and again lol.


Also this film is not an easy watch and it wasn't an enjoyable watch for the whole film and sometimes even an uncomfortable watch, but nonetheless at the finish line I did have the feeling of having watched an interesting film. I haven't watched other films by Xu Tong but will be on the lookout for them. 

Whose eyes

by Tan Tan
China, 2011


from IFFR site:
Daily life as seen by surveillance cameras. Well actually, as seen by leading experimental filmmaker Tan Tan.

Four ‘fake surveillance videos’, mixed with violent outbursts that are recorded on real security cameras and apparently random shots from everyday Chinese reality: the image of Whose Eyes. Which reality is the most real, and who sees what?


my thoughts:
Sometimes also a short film can move you so much. This mixture of surveillance shots taken from trams, a shop, at an ATM, an outdoor fitness area, etc. show much more than you would think at first sight. 


It reveals one of the biggest problems in Chinese society... that it seems nobody is willing to help or care for the other (outside of their inner circle). The problem is huge. It was one of my fears when living in China that I would get into a traffic accident and that I would be lying there helplessly without anybody helping me. Because that's what happens. They don't take action or initiative. Not when an accident happens, a fight takes place, a child is hurt or wounded or whatever. Out of fear to be hold responsible, out of fear not knowing what to do.
Partly it's historical luggage: One of Mao's quotes: To let things drift if they do not affect one personally. But also governmental authorities are to blame. Apparently people are so terrified of being charged themselves instead of the one who caused the accident or whatever (easier way out for the authorities). 


A few months ago this was tragically shown in the news world wide when a toddler was run over by a van several times and nobody reacted, until a migrant woman rescued her. The toddler died within a week afterwards. The Chinese began to wonder whether they had become a 'world without morals'.


I experienced it also works the other way: Chinese people always looked extremely surprised (almost annoyed) if I would reach out to them to help them. 


I found the sound of the film a bit disturbing at times, I don't know if it was meant to be this loud, maybe he wanted to wake his viewers up with his message. 


But other than that I found this film very interesting!


In the credits we read: God and all the eyes.... 

L'estate di Giacomo

The summer of Giacomo
by Alessandro Comodin
Italy / France / Belgium, 2011


from IFFR site:
A summer day in Italy. The camera follows the deaf-mute Giacomo and a childhood girlfriend Stefi closely - in the woods, by the river - without wanting to disrupt the mystery of their relationship, between restrained sensuality and childhood games. Many regard this lyrical and modest docu-fiction as the best Italian debut in years.

After a long opening scene in which 19-year-old Giacomo plays a stormy drum solo while the camera focuses on his hearing aid, the hard-of-hearing boy sets off on a languid summer afternoon with his childhood girlfriend Stefi through the woods to a remote river. There the two swim and sunbathe, enjoy picnic sandwiches, chatter away mindlessly, listen to music and throw clay at each other in the water.
During large parts of the minimalist, delicate, occasionally sultry Summer of Giacomo, the camera moves not a millimetre off Giacomo and Stefi - the viewer can almost count the spots on his back and the soft tears in her neck. The wonderful, nonprofessional actors Giacomo Zulian and Stefania Comodin apparently have no trouble holding the viewer's attention and slowly the relationship between the two of them becomes clearer. At last year's Locarno Festival, novice director Alessandro Comodin won an award in the category ‘Cineasti del Presenti’ (Filmmakers of the Present).


my thoughts:
What a sweet coming of age film. Makes you think of dreamy summers, of childhood years, being a teenager and teenager loves and it brings back memories of those years where life was more carefree. 


Set in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region this documentary/fiction film follows Giacomo, who is deaf, and his childhood girlfriend Stefi. Loved the interaction between the two friends, loved the settings, loved the music. 
Not much happens. But when thinking back of my own teenage summers I have the same hazy lazy feeling about it (apart from my summer jobs that is ;). Even getting bored because of that haziness and longing for some action. With this film I did get the feeling that there was that kind of under layer as well. So for me it did portray those teenage years very well.


The film doesn't give any clue about what and how, not even after the surprising turn of events in the end of the film. I guess it had to tell me something about eventually growing up, out of that teenager stage and being more serious now. Less innocent. I think the film doesn't have the carefree feel anymore in the end what it does have in the beginning, so that was my conclusion of the film. But that's all for you to interpret yourselves...


I loved it!

Sentimental animal

by Wu Quan
China, 2011


from IFFR site:
Mysterious, oppressive and occasionally shocking film in stylised black-and-white (shot by a colleague director Zhang Yuedong) about the latter days of a potentate: Wu Ye was a respected soldier, but his clan is now preparing a Last Supper for the Spring Festival.

The fact that there are now signs of growing diversity in style, theme and approach in Chinese independent fiction film is clear from the first film by the versatile Wu Quan. In contrasty, very sharp black-and-white (shot by cameraman Zhang Yuedong, who directed the minimalist-absurdist Mid-Afternoon Barks), Sentimental Animal is a meticulously styled, occasionally sensitive and sometimes shocking allegory that will not easily be forgotten.
Wu has made a film about the latter days of a Chinese patriarch. This former soldier and owner of the fish farm where the events take place became physically handicapped after a heroic deed. Although he can no longer speak and needs help from his nurse for virtually all his actions, he is still the respected leader of his clan. But now he is approaching his end and takes on his last, difficult task.


my thoughts:
The film starts off with a man lying on a bed with a tear rolling down his cheek. We don't know yet what is happening. It was an intriguing shot though, as are many others to follow. 


The filmmaker didn't use a real script, they had one but eventually decided not to use it after all.   They decided to follow the flow.


Warning: Not for sentimental animal lovers, the film starts off with killing a donkey. All the way. But that happens in a lot of Chinese films. 
It turns out that the donkey is meant for the new year's meal they will have together. A pre-new year's party because they will all go to their hometowns for Chinese New Year's.
It is a new year's party as well as birthday party for Wu Ye, a former soldier still admired by his people. He's seriously ill and this could be the last meal together. He does have more power in himself than everyone thinks though. 


I liked the setting of this film: the fish farm looks like a green/glass house and they all live inside. At night it gives a great shot. 
The film definitely is oppressive but I didn't think it was too shocking. I found it remarkable that in this film there were two men with disabilities. For a longer time they were considered 'useless' in Chinese society, in this film you will see a great form of respect towards both. 


I have been watching quite some films in black and white in this film festival for some reason (and sometimes I didn't even notice, I guess that tells you something about the film, right). For this film there wasn't any other than a budget reason to choose for black and white. It does suit the film. It even makes it a bit more mysterious.

The title has no specific meaning but does refer to the donkeys of the start of the film, the fish from the fish farm and people as they can be the worst of animals... 

Interesting film quote:
"This is my heart on a plate" (plate = empty)

Apuda

by He Yuan
China, 2010


from IFFR site:
With a painter’s eye, the filmmaker portrays a poor, simple man caring for his sick father. Bitter beauty. An exquisite impression of two men who live the way many millions of Chinese do. Not everyone gets to share the new wealth.

In a sensitive and balanced way, He Yuan portrays two men who live in bitter poverty. Apuda is a simple man, who almost thinks like a child - a good child, because he dedicates himself to caring for his sick old father. Even though the film focuses on these two men specifically, it also provides a picture of a China in which millions of people still live in deprived circumstances.
Like other Chinese independent filmmakers, He Yuan has an ethnographic and anthropological background and also a fascination with the lives of ordinary Chinese citizens outside the modern urban centres. But he does not observe in the way a social scientist would. He prefers to compare himself with painters from olden times who went out into nature to capture reality as it revealed itself to them.
While Apuda worries about the health of his father and lovingly nurses him, the filmmaker observes the inevitable end no less lovingly.


my thoughts:
Apuda lives together with his father in a small and simple farm house (no water/electricity) and takes care of him, his father is in his last days of life. They live in Wusuwan village, which is near Lijiang in Yunnan province, China. They are Naxi people (minority group in China). 


The filmmaker is Naxi as well, the film is made from that perspective. He doesn't know the Naxi dialect and is living in a city himself, he said. He stayed in the village a couple of times to do fieldwork before filming. He left the camera rolling in their house most of the time. He compared it with going out in nature to paint, just the way things are.


Apuda and his father spend most of the time of the film in the shared bedroom. Sleeping, eating, smoking (I loved how the pipe was in their pouch), thinking out loud. Not much happens besides of that. But then again it gives a very clear picture of their life... it just isn't that eventful. 


The dad says at one point, when someone brings a gift in the form of eggs: "I sure must be in a bad state to bring me eggs." His body was giving up on him more and more.


The son - while walking through his orchard - is questioning himself and his life: "The will think I am a clown, they will laugh at me" (loosing face) and "All the women (harvesting the apples for him) do is the apple selling business, they are so annoying.... No one will cry at my grave..."
He calculated that one ton of apples would make 800 yuan but stated that he doesn't even produce one ton. In other words, it doesn't bring much for daily living. 
It all sounded so sad, hopeless and lonely. No one will do for him what he now is doing for his father.


The film tells about awareness of life, of getting older, dying, about living the hard way. In our western eyes it for sure doesn't look easy, not clean, poor... 


Eventually the father dies and we are lead through the different stages after his death. I think it was very well captured. Especially the song (song for the death I guess) is lovely.  


Our cinema wasn't too full to begin with but during screening many people walked away. I must admit I did have a moment or two that I dozed off as well. The film is absolutely not an easy watch, it takes quite something to sit through. You literally have to work through it. But I still think it's worth that, it shows so well how many people still live in China. It's not a picture the government wants to show because it's not a sign of the first economy of the world they want to be, but it still *is* reality in China.