NZ IFF 2020 Day 5

Sometimes in spite of the best efforts, terrible films slip onto your roster, and today was that day. Ah, well.

Dinner in America

When the one of the leads of your film has a personality which can best be described as the embodiment of Schroedinger’s arsehole, it’s gonna be an uphill struggle with me. When the lead is supposed to be some sort of Manic Pixie Fuckboi, whose arsehole personality is the liberating magic that improves the lives of a bored suburban 20 year old and her family, well, you’ve jumped a whole school of sharks before the 20 minute mark of your 110 minute tour of unpleasantness in the company of the kind of guy who confuses negging with authenticity while giving you and his actual girlfriend an STD.

If you enjoy spending time with the sort of shitstain who thinks “snide and dismissive” is a personality, you might enjoy this film. Otherwise it’s probably going to be an ordeal. It certainly was for me.

Art Shorts

Album, Lettre de Venezia, A List of Lost Poems, That Which Is to Come Is Just a Promise

A collection focused on themes of past and future, the two standouts here for me were Album and That Which Is to Come Is Just a Promise; the former is excerpts from a WW I solder’s letters home, laid over images of the time, and moden images of the same places.

That Which Is to Come, on the other hand, is silent trip across Tuvalu, people playing, hanging out, leading their lives, and cutting between the now and a future vision of a sea level rise, the people suddenly splashing about as they continue. It’s a powerful demonstration, and brings a reality home in a way an essay can’t.

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