The IFFR: quick round-up (final update 2/2)

Done. Over. Finished. 34 films in 10 days. I’ll post an overview tomorrow, and hopefully (if my editor allows it) some more in depth pieces in the near future. Further info on the films can be found here.

The Great, at last: Naissance Des Pieuvres/Water Lilies (Céline Sciamma, 2007)

The Surprisingly, and Quite Stunningly, Good: Margot At The Wedding (Noah Baumbach, 2007)

The Fun & Touching: The Band’s Visit (Eran Kolirin, 2007)

The Quiet & Lovely: La Maison Jaune (Amor Hakkar, 2007)

The Should Be a Revered Classic: Der Verlorene (Peter Lorre, 1951)

The Reason I Love Older Movies: Phase IV (Saul Bass, 1974), The Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1970)

The Simply Fun: Estomago (Marcos Jorge, 2007), Un Baiser, S’il Vous Plait (Emmanuel Mouret, 2007)

The Not Joining the Crowd, but not Joining the Dissenters either (aka the Fun, but Not Amazing): Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007)

The Fun & Well-Acted, but Somewhat Superficial: Tiramisu (Paula van der Oest, 2008)

The Entertaining Despite Flaws: True Stories (David Byrne, 1986), 3 Days to Forever (Riri Riza, 2007), End of The Line (Gustavo Steinberg, 2007), The King of Ping Pong (Jens Jonsson, 2007)

The Absolutely Nuts, but Impressive and Fun: the 1 take Still Orangutans (Gustavo Spolidoro, 2007)

The Truly Clumsy, but Not Entirely Without Charm: Pure Coolness (Ernest Abdyjaparov, 2007)

The Worth it For the Music and Atmosphere, if not the story: Burned Hearts (Ahmed El Maanouni, 2007)

The Competent & Well-Made, yet not exceptional: Cordero De Dios (Lucía Cedrón, 2008)

The Understandably Disliked, but Quite Enjoyable to Me: Les Amours D’Astrée et de Céladon (Eric Rohmer, 2007)

The Disappointing, but Still Pretty Good: Paranoid Park (Gus van Sant, 2007)

The Odd, but Oddly Charming: Die Stille Vor Bach (Pere Portabella, 2007)

The Demanding, not Necessarily Rewarding but B&W Beautiful: The Man From London (Béla Tarr, 2007)

The Not as Great as Rumored but B&W Beautiful: Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Perronaud, 2007)

The Fascinating Experiment in B&W Animation: Fear(s) of the Dark (various directors, 2007)

The Entertaining but not Quite Satisfying; Uno de los Dos no Puedo Estar Equivocado (Pablo Llorca, 2007)

The Interesting Experience: Wadley (Matias Meyer, 2008)

The Operatically Strange, Somewhat Intersting: The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez (Peter Sellars, 1991)

The Interesting Concept that unfortunately peters out: Le Tueur (Cédric Anger, 2007)

The Interesting Concept that doesn’t really add up to anything besides crying men: Men’s Group (Michael Joy, 2008)

The Unfortunately Quite Dull (and Lacking in Film Clips): Un Lugar en el Cine (Alberto Morais, 2007)

The “I wish I liked this more than I did”: Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1971)

The Not-For-Me: Hafez (Abolfazl Jalili, 2007)

The Simply Boring: Marrakesh Inshallah (Steffen Fisker Pierce & Christian Pierce, 2006)

The Highlight of Saturday:

The IFFR

The festival has begun. So far, I’ve seen 4 movies, slept barely 6 hours, and I’m preparing myself for today’s program. Tomorrow’s my most anticipated day already, with Juno, The Man From London, and Persepolis, but today I already get to see Paranoid Park. For those of you who can read Dutch, you can keep up with my adventures (and those of fellow iffr-visitors Kaj and Thijs) here. For the others, I’m afraid I can’t do more than post a snippet every once in a while, a stray observation, a tally. Right now, the only one that occurs to me is that is was really, really cold last night, and that I need to buy some deodorant because I forgot to pack it.

The tally so far? I disliked one film, liked two despite their obvious flaws, and liked one reasonably well. I’m hoping the truly good movies are just around the corner.