Category Archives: EIFF

EIFF 2008

It’s been so long since the film festival that I keep on forgetting half the good films I saw there when talking to people about it, so for the record here’s a brief list of my personal highlights:

Encounters at the End of the World: Werner Hertzog goes to Antarctica, making a film more about the [...]

Standard Operating Procedure

One of the best films that I saw at the EIFF this year was Errol Morris’ documentary Standard Operating Procedure about Abu Ghraib. It takes his usual approach: a series of interviews with those involved with limited narration. Here the most prominent interviewees are Lynndie England and Sabrina Harmann, together others who were either directly [...]

Seeing what’s in front of you

One of the things I keep noticing in Q&A sessions for documentary films is that some people seem to have a hard time relating to the people they see on screen as being actual people.
Today I watched The Order of Myths at the EIFF. The film is a documentary about the Mardi Gras celebrations in [...]

EIFF 2007

I’ve not written up anything from the film festival properly as I meant to and at this rate I’ll never get round to it so here goes…
It was a good year for fun late night movies, Teeth especially. It’s a very simple idea and they’ve hit it bang on; it’s hard to add anything to [...]

In Search of a Midnight Kiss

It’s new year’s eve in Los Angeles; Wilson and Vivian have met as a result of a craigslist advert posted earlier in the day. He’s had a terrible year - his attempts to pursue his dreams started to go wrong before he even reached the city - and as we find out during the film [...]

Timing is everything

Usually seeing a film at the film festival means seeing it in the most favorable circumstances - all the technical stuff will usually be done well, sometimes the filmmakers will often be there to talk about the film and there is usually a large, appreciative audience which helps the atmosphere no end. Unfortunately that doesn’t [...]

EIFF 2007

Some reviews I’ve twittered of things I’ve seen appear below (I may update). It’s not txt speak but it’s very noticeable how hard I’m finding it to write these quickly in the small space Twitter gives you.
I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK: madcap fantasy. From the director of Oldboy. Scary under the surface but [...]