Pointing a mirror somewhere in the direction of the economic crisis of today, When the Lights Went Out takes place in Yorkshire, England in the early nineteen seventies, a period where the country was stricken by black-outs as a result of industrial strikes, and (implied) financial difficulty has seen the Maynard family – father Len (Steven Waddington; TVs Robin Hood), mother Jenny (Kate Ashfield; Shaun of the Dead), and moody thirteen year-old daughter Sally (Tasha Connor) – forced to move to another house. Soon after arriving in their new home, Sally begins to suspect that they are not alone – a suspicion that is largely confirmed when a grandfather clock goes hurting down the stairs, pushed by an invisible hand.

To Holden’s credit, the film doesn’t linger in the no-one-believes-the-little-girl stage for very long. But even when her parents get in on the supernatural action, their apparent ambivalence to it all makes very little sense. This is one of those movies where the passing of time doesn’t seem to match up with the behaviour of the characters; the haunting goes on sporadically for what must be weeks, yet it takes the Maynards almost the entire movie before they try and do something about it. Meanwhile, the reason eventually given for the haunting is extraordinarily bland, and the manner in which it is revealed is likewise unimaginative.

Holden’s direction is competently glossy, but he frequently relies on the most basic genre clichés – doors that won’t open, ghostly figures in reflective surfaces – to generate only a the most meagre level of unease. Admittedly, the performances are solid, especially from the young ladies Connor and newcomer Hannah Clifford as Sally’s only friend Lucy. The other impressive thing about the film is its really terrific period detail; Holden’s production design team have done a fabulous job recreating the hairstyles, clothing and hideous (by today’s standards) décor of seventies living, providing the film with a genuine sense of time and of place.

But avocado wallpaper and cigarette-smoking housewives are not enough to recommend a movie, especially when it’s meant to be a scary one. As a horror film, When the Lights Go Out is both sub-par and derivative, and never is this more apparent than in its “one final scare” ending that is simultaneously cheap, predictable and completely nonsensical. Although we’ve seen this story done worse – the recent Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark springs to mind – we’ve also seen it done a lot better.

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When the Lights went Out was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Room 514 (IFFR Review)

Kotoko (IFFR Review)

38 Witnesses [38 Témoins] (IFFR Review)

Alps (IFFR Review)

Still Life [Stillleben] (IFFR Review)

Room 514 is the first film from writer/director Sharon Bar-Ziv, and unfortunately, it shows. The central conflict of his script is really engaging, especially thanks to a determined performance from lead actress Asa Neifeld, and a terrific supporting turn from Udi Persi as the soldier she is interrogating. But the cinematography is unforgivably poor. Bar-Ziv jitters and wobbles his handheld camera – always uncomfortably close to the actor’s faces – in a typically misguided attempt to add realism and grit. He’d have been better off just sitting the thing on a tripod and letting the actors do the heavy lifting.

With only a handful of locations and half a dozen actors to work with, it’s obvious that the limited budget informed the script and has restricted Bar-Ziv’s ability to dive more deeply into the issues he is trying to explore. Instead, he offers up a boring subplot involving Anna’s sexual affair with her engaged superior officer, a thread which does little more than pad out the runtime, and inadvertently kill any momentum that the central conflict might have been gathering. The same is true of the seemingly random black-and-white cut away sequences of Anna in private (eventually revealed to be part of an ending that feels tacked on and redundant).

Although not without its strengths, Room 514 ultimately suffers due, mostly, to lack of money and experience. Other movies – Park Chan-Wook’s phenomenal Joint Security Area, for example – have done this concept better. As have most police shows.

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Room 514 was reviewed as part of our coverage of the 41^st International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

You can read all of Tom Clift’s coverage of the festival here.

Joint Security Area [2000] (KOFFIA Review)

Kill List (IFFR Review)

Alps (IFFR Review)

Clip [Klip] (IFFR Review)

38 Witnesses [38 Témoins] (IFFR Review)

From the moment that Albert Narracott (newcomer Jeremy Irvine) lays eyes Joey, he feels a connection that is destined to last a lifetime. A gift to Albert from his father (Peter Mullan; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1), Joey is a strong, wilful but loyal young horse, one who Albert must train to plough the fields lest their home be repossessed by their heartless, money-grubbing landlord (Peter Thewlis; Deathly Hallows Part 2). These first thirty minutes of War Horse are the most insufferable of the lot, as the script drags us through and across every syrupy valley and peak – Joey’s initial failings as a plough-horse to his eventual, plot-assured success – with laughable indulgence. Spielberg shoots scene after scene against the orange sky of dusk – the so called golden hour – as if too lend his story additional dramatic weight. Similarly, John Williams’ tirelessly mawkish score feels explicitly designed to turn every wistful gaze between boy and horse into a tumultuous rollercoaster ride of cloud-parting, earth-shattering emotion.

Things pick up to a canter once war breaks out, and Joey is sold off to a young Major (Tom Hiddleston; Thor) in the British cavalry and is shipped across the English Channel to fight the Germans in France. But with the tides of war constantly changing, it’s not long before Joey changes hands again. And then again. And again. This is the crux of War Horse’s problems. While Joey remains constant, his human owners are constantly changing, and with each new one – be they soldier or civilian, French, English or German – it gets harder and harder to become invested in their stories. Joey, meanwhile, remains consistently a horse. The “performances” of the fourteen different animals that play Joey are fantastic, yet try as I might, I cannot put as much stock in a horse’s life as I can in a person’s.

The reason for the film’s structure – really a series of vignettes – is obvious. Spielberg (and Stafford before him, and Morpurgo before him) wishes to communicate the far reaching devastation of war. In that, the film is successful, and many of the battle sequences, although bloodless, are so intense that parents would do well to leave small children at home. Conversely, there are moments in War Horse that communicate the goodness and humanity that exists in all people, regardless of country or creed. In these moments, War Horse is truly touching.

But the reality is that these scenes would have been so much more powerful if the film wasn’t attempting – and failing – to provoke that same teary sensation for literally its entire runtime. Predictably, the last ten minutes of the movie slide right back into deplorable treacle, ensuring that it is the film’s weaknesses, rather than its strengths, that are on your mind when the end credits role.

Secretariat (Review)

Australian Box Office Report 18-21 Nov 2010: Harry Potter 7 dominates

Australian Box Office Report: Nov 25-28 2010

WTF: Is Voldemort Harry Potter’s tamest villain?

Australian Box Office 16/12/2010: Tron trumps Megamind

Based on a little known short story by Irish novelist George Moore, Albert Nobbs concerns itself with the comings and goings of guests and employees of the luxurious Morrison’s hotel, and particularly those of the eponymous Albert Nobbs. Albert’s well-mannered professionalism makes him a favourite of the establishments matron (a simpering Pauline Colins; Bleak House) but his false persona, one he has been wearing for over thirty years, has left him sad, lonely and incapable of connecting. But Albert’s world is sent into a tail-spin after a chance encounter with Hubert (Janet McTeer; Tideland), another male impersonator, whose happy married life inspires Albert to pursue a similar situation with a spritely young housemaid named Helen (Mia Wasikowska; Alice in Wonderland). Unfortunately for Albert, there’s competition for Helen’s affections, in the forms of the handsome but unscrupulous Joe Macken (Aaron Johnson; Kick Ass) who promises to whisk her away to America.

What is most bizarre about Albert Nobbs is how willfully it abandons its premise, opting after the first half hour to focus on a turgid love triangle where questions of Nobbs’ gender barely come into play. Watching Albert constantly trying to win the favour of Helen – all too willing to string him along for the benefits it might yield – is pitiful, and does little to ingratiate either of them. Joe Macken is even more unpleasant than his girlfriend, although inconsistencies in his behaviour suggest that key moments of his character arc were left on the editing room floor. Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) and Janet McTeer bring a bit of colour as the jolly Dr. Holloran and the matter of fact Hubert, as does Jonathan Rhys Myers (From Paris With Love) in a slightly confusing, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as a bawdy patron of the Morrison hotel. But all the while, Albert himself remains tragically unimposing figure, and seems to fade into the wallpaper mere seconds after he arrives in the room.

As a result of Albert’s cringe-worthy blandness, even the film’s one major selling point – the multi-award nominated performance by Glenn Close – seems peculiarly underwhelming. The veteran actress nails the characters every awkward movement and painfully formal tick, only to demonstrate that a convincingly boring protagonist is no more appealing than an unconvincingly boring one. Nobbs’ ambitions – a tobacco shop and a dutiful wife – are pathetically meagre, and any desire on our part to see him achieve them is dampened by the assuredness of his failure. Meanwhile, potentially fascinating questions about his psychology and sexuality go totally unasked, while even his courtship of Helen seems borne more out of propriety than a sense of physical attraction.

With the exception of a couple of awkward laughs – Albert pondering when to reveal his secret to a potential bride, or donning a dress to go frolicking along the beach – Garcia’s film comes and goes with leaving a single discernible impression. One leaves the cinema with a perplexing feeling – not irritation or intense dislike, but rather a mild discontentment. At the end of the day it seems, Albert Nobbs the movie is rather similar to Albert Nobbs the man: straight-backed, girdled and inoffensive, but doomed to be forgotten.

Glenn Close pulls on the pants for ‘Albert Nobbs’ adaptation

War Horse (Review)

Casting begins on Judd Apatow’s ‘Knocked Up’ spin-off

The Young Victoria (Review)

Resident Evil: Afterlife (Review)

In our first glimpse of Monsieur Tintin (voiced by Jamie Bell of Billy Elliot fame), he appears as we’ve always known him: rendered in the simple but endearing 2D strokes of Herge’s original artwork. It’s a cheeky little moment, and is sure to bring smiles to the faces of Tintin aficionados. More to the point, it demonstrates both the affection and the obligation Spielberg, Jackson and the rest of their collaborators feel towards Herge’s beloved material. The script for Tintin’s big screen 3D adventure is based on three of Herge’s graphic novels (The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure), and sees its hero – a baby faced investigative journalist with unwavering determination – contend with pickpockets and pirates in a race to locate a mysterious sunken treasure.

In his first foray into animated filmmaking, the inventor of the blockbuster proves himself adequately equipped.  Unlike Zemeckis or Cameron, Spielberg isn’t striving for photorealism with his use of motion capture; his characters all possess the same exaggerated features of the cartoons on which they are based. There’s great technical procession on display here, and it’s clear that thousands of hours were invested. Still, with the exception of one spectacularly unlikely “one-take” chase sequence through the animated streets of Morocco, the animation, as well as the pointless 3D, is decent and yet unremarkable; detailed and lacking in any obvious flaws, but containing little of vibrancy or artistic ambition of 2011s other animated films. When compared to Rango or Kung Fu Panda 2, Tintin seems unimpressive and lifeless.

But what really kills Tintin is Tintin himself. Noble, clever and handsome (in an Aryan kind of way), few protagonists in living memory are as uninteresting – and before long, as irritating – as the hero of this film. Spielberg and his screenwriters – a normally talented trio of Englishmen consisting of Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), Joe Cornish (Attack the Block) and Steven Moffat (TVs Doctor Who) – retain the comic book trope of having the character speak his every thought and deduction out loud. It’s a technique that passes on the page, but proves cringe worthy when adapted for the screen. What’s worse is that Tintin is never wrong. Infallible is just another word for boring, and without any danger that Tintin might make a mistake or suffer an injury, there’s never a corresponding sense of peril or excitement.

Attempts to please fans create additional problems. The brief appearance of Thompson and Thomson – a pair of bumbling detectives voiced, unnecessarily, by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead) – may amuse some, but their recurring subplot soon hampers the films pacing. Other supporting characters fare better; Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace) brings some much needed flavour as the dastardly villain Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine, while the energy of the picture picks up considerably once the boisterous Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis; Rise of the Planet of the Apes) arrives on deck. But none of them can make up for the androgynous protagonist, who is a bland character, played blandly, and to who even the thicket 3D lenses cannot add dimension.

Ultimately, The Adventures of Tintin is an earnest but misguided effort. Spielberg and Jackson have attempted to introduce a character they love to a new generation of moviegoers. But in doing so they have captured only a fraction of the excitement, the mystery or the joy of his print bound adventures, and failed to realize one very important fact: what works in one medium does not always work in another. Their film is by no means terrible, and is certainly eventful and colourful enough to serve as adequate fodder for children. But it’s hard to imagine generations of Tintin fans – or your average adult moviegoer – being satisfied with that.

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (Review)

War Horse (Review)

Green Lantern (Video Review)

Attack the Block (Review)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [2011] (Review)

Fittingly, as both a prequel and a modern day remake, The Thing suffers from the fundamental problems of both. In its function as prequel, the story centres around a team of Norwegian scientists who discover an alien life-form lodged under the Antarctic ice. It is the same life-form that we already know can assume the form of any creature it touches, and that is guaranteed to survive the film so it can go on to wreak havoc on Kurt Russell and his team of Americans. This knowledge saps practically all the suspense from the picture, as we watch with acute awareness that the fates of every new character – including plucky American palaeontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead; Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) and roguish helicopter pilot Sam Carter (Australia’s own Joel Edgerton; Animal Kingdom) – are already set in stone.

Similarly, as it lifts all of its concepts and a large majority of its scenes almost directly out of the Carpenter version, the movie contains almost none of the surprise or ingenuity that makes that film so great. The sense of paranoia that any one of the crew members could be “the thing” still exists to some degree, but van Heijningen is unable to capture the same ominous dread that Carpenter did. His direction of the actors is poor, with Winstead especially coming across as ill-prepared and totally unconvincing. Meanwhile, the script’s idea of science involves a lot of looking through microscopes at animated bacteria. The film also takes a typically anti-intellectual position by painting the only objective scientist (played by Ulrich Thomsen; The World is Not Enough) as a pig-headed villain.

Even more disappointing to fans of the original is the pictures middling use of special effects. The Carpenter film is famous for its incredible and delightfully disgusting use of makeup, puppetry and animatronics, effects that saw flesh rupturing, melting and in one beloved scene, sprouting spider legs and scurrying across the floor. What is even more remarkable is that, with only one of two exceptions, the effects in the original are still convincing today. To van Heijningen’s credit, he does attempt to utilize practical effects where possible, and when he does they tend to look great. But at other points he cops out with CGI, a technology that has none of the same visceral grossness of a tangible prop.

There is one area in which the new film improves on the Carpenter version: the inclusion of the language barrier, a story element which adds another layer of mistrust between the Norwegian and American characters. Still, this is not nearly enough to recommend what is in essence a banal, lacklustre and totally unoriginal film.

The Thing [2011] (Review)

Competition: Win tickets to see THE THING!

The Day The Earth Stood Still (Review)

The Darkest Hour (Review)

Competition: Win an epic SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD prize pack!

The relationship in question here the one depicted in Lone Scherfig’s adaptation of David Nicholls best-seller, One Day. It’s between Dexter (Jim Sturgess; The Way Back) and Emma (Anne Hathaway; Love and Other Drugs), two friends who essentially take the two decades previously mentioned to realise that they’re meant to be. As to whether you’ll find the film agreeable or not, that’s going to be intrinsically linked with your stance on the genre best described as ‘the weepy’.

Dexter and Emma graduate from university on July 15, 1988. This happens to be St Swithin’s day, as Dexter informs Emma on the morning of their first encounter. They very nearly sleep together that morning, running into a near miss after a night of celebrating their graduation. It’s then that Emma and Dexter decide to be friends, thus beginning the story of their entwined lives.

It’s on St Swithin’s Day every year that we check in on the Dex & Em to see where they’re at. Sometimes they’re together, sometimes they’re not. Sometimes the mood is joyous, but more often than not one of them is in dire need of the other, of friendly advice and comfort. By keeping to the one day per year, One Day rollicks along at a fine pace, although some might find the episodic structure a cause for slight irritation. In the months between each July 15 events obviously occur, but if they don’t transpire on July 15, they take place off-screen. In rather heavy-handed symbolism, Emma enquires about Dexter’s new tattoo. It’s a yin yang symbol he explains, “a perfect union of opposites.” Dexter, who finds success early, turns into a coked-up twat TV host and quickly hits rock bottom. Emma, who puts her literary dreams on the back burner immediately after university grows in strength and confidence (and beauty, as Anne Hathaway loses the silly, over-sized spectacles) as the year-counter ticks along.  They go through a lot, that much is clear. So, one hast to hope that the two leads have chemistry. Luckily for One Day, they do.

Without a doubt, I’m of the opinion that if it weren’t for Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway, I would have enjoyed One Day far less. The pair possess on-screen chemistry above the necessary quota, and for this the goings-on are elevated in quality and believability. Jim Sturgess imbues Dexter with the right amount of cockiness and bravado, makes him an irritating toff, but not a d*ck that one is inclined to hate. Here’s a fun fact (I’ll say ‘fact’, but it’s really just me postulating) about Anne Hathaway. She is blessed with some sort of skill or naturally occurring ability to remain a likable onscreen presence, even while speaking in one of the worst English accents I’ve heard in a long while. It’s really bad. Really bad. Aside from that, Hathaway’s performance is solid, and certainly she has a number of really fine, often humourous and endearing moments.

But — and it’s a big but — there’s just something about One Day that didn’t work for me. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it’s the weepiness of the goings-on, which brings me back to that question of the execution of a weepy mentioned earlier. To me, Lone Scherfig appeared to be hell-bent on squeezing every bit of emotion out of every reel. There’s grandiose where there should have been simple. There’s cheap sentimentality where there should have been a whole lot of delving into the core of characters we have to spend no less than two decades with. Scenes seem overwrought and mawkish, gestures seem a little heavy-handed, there’s a fair amount of ponderousness. Yes, this onscreen courtship did cross the line into “getting out of hand” and “maudlin”. And this is where my warning earlier regarding one’s stance on the weepy comes in. If you don’t mind a film doing its utmost to make you reach for the Kleenex, then chances are you’ll have no problem with One Day. To its credit, it is a notch above the usual romantic dramedy fare of recent memory. However, I dare say I would have cared far more for Dexter and Emma if Lone Scherfig (and this is such a shame to say, after An Education) had opted for a less is more approach rather than taking a leaf out of the Weepy How-To book.

Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess to spend ‘One Day’ together

Anne Hathaway is Catwoman in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’

No Strings Attached (Review)

Love and Other Drugs (Review)

Bride Wars (Review)

In this future, giant mechanical warriors have taken the place of human fighters in arena boxing. Hugh Jackman’s (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and his distractingly prominent bicep veins plays Charlie Kenton, a washed-up boxer and absentee father who spends his time dodging debt collectors and trying to scrape together a living entering rundown robots in underground events. Soon after losing his star robot in a particularly absurd and rather disturbing set of circumstances, Charlie finds out that a former girlfriend has died and that her sister wants to take full custody of his eleven-year-old son, Max (Dakota Goyo; Thor). Sensing an opportunity to make score some quick cash, Charlie agrees to sign away his parental rights to the tune of $100,000 — to which the boy’s wealthy uncle agrees on the condition he looks after Max for three weeks while he and his wife enjoy a European vacation. What Charlie doesn’t count on is that Max is a movie child; a plucky, wisecracking scamp with an eye for robot boxing — an eye that just might come in handy when the unlikely duo uncover a rundown old robot named Atom and decide to train him for a fight.

While Real Steel might be the first movie ever made about professional robot boxing — Transformers doesn’t count — it still follows convention and genre clichés to an unabashed degree. Every step in the father and son’s underdog journey – every victory, every set back, every scene where they slowly learn to love each other – is telegraphed from the moment the opening credits role. As such, the score by Danny Elfman tells you exactly what you are meant to be feeling at every given moment, while several scenes backed by new tracks from Enimem and 50 Cent make you wonder how much money it takes to get “gangster” rappers like these to sell out to DreamWorks and an executive producing Steven Spielberg.

And yes, while Real Steel is considerably better thanTransformers 3 and marginally better than Cowboys & Aliens, there is no denying that that Spielberg’s name as producer, once synonymous with quality, is now a greater indication that a film will be high on budget but criminally lacking in imagination. Indeed, with the obscene amount of blatant product placement on display in Real Steel – quite honestly the most I can recall seeing in a movie – it would appear that there was more consideration given to keeping the Dr. Pepper cans in frame than was given to plot, character or meaning.

Of course, one could agrue that Real Steel is the twenty-first century equivalent to the movies that Spielberg himself used to make. There is little doubt that this movie will entertain boys between the ages of seven and fourteen; the action is frequent, well shot and the special effects – there’s no denying – are superb. But there is an insidious undercurrent to the violence in Real Steel that makes me hesitant to recommend it to families. At one point in the film Charlie mourns the end of real boxing, telling his son that audiences simply wanted more violence than the human body could handle. And this is exactly what Real Steel offers. The robots bash and dismember each other before collapsing into pools of their own motor oil, as the human crowd — our eleven year old protagonist included — cheer for more.

The violence is not the only disturbing cinematic convention that the movie is guilty of playing to. Evangeline Lily (Lost) appears as a love interest of sorts, a woman frequently dismissed and abandoned while Charlie is on the road, but who remains utterly helpless to his charms, willing to shoulder his emotional and financial neglect as long as he climbs into bed whenever he is in town.

A female character even more short changed was Max’s unseen mother, a woman whose death seems to have had not the slightest emotional impact on anyone including her pre-teen son, and whose passing serves as nothing more than a plot device to place the boy in the care of a man totally unfit to look after him. Jackman’s charisma does an enormous amount to rescue this film from being completely unwatchable, but all winning smiles aside, his character should have been put in prison for child endangerment by the end of the first half hour.

I’m not saying Real Steel will make your children murderers or misogynists. No, what it’s much more likely to do is give them poor taste. This movie might be a decent family film if it were the exception to Hollywood’s rule. But the truth of the matter is that mediocre and clichéd material like this – films that don’t even try to challenge audience expectations – makes up the majority of what the studios are churning out. There is not a skerrick of genuine feeling or creativity to Real Steel. Instead, there are only mechanics.

Australian Box Office 6/11/11: We still love to be ‘In Time’

Kevin Costner cast in Superman reboot ‘Man of Steel’?

Australian Box Office 30/10/2011: JT not just NSync but In Time for top spot

Not so unlucky now Mr. Cavill…

The Darkest Hour (Review)

For the record, I’m not usually the guy who wills a film to hurry through all the back-story and characterisation in order to get to the boom-boom, blowy-upy bits – I’m a film critic, for goodness sake! — but let  Rise of the Planet of the Apes be an exception. Here is a movie so drearily earnest in disposition, generic in premise and plodding in pace, it’s a downright shame some of the finest animation ever seen on screen is found within. To say that the CGI ape, Caesar (Andy Serkis in mo-cap), gives the best performance is a tremendous understatement. He’s a work of fine art, and even if I didn’t rally behind him like the film desperately wants you to do, I did understand him. The same cannot be said about his less-hirsute co-stars, all of whom are so dull and ill-defined, they’re not really worth talking about. So yes, the “Rise” part of the title might be a little misleading, but the bit about “Apes” is bang on the money.

It’s at this point in the review that I admit I have no affinity whatsoever for the Planet of the Apes franchise, nor did I feel a pressing need to see how it all began. Sure, that hasn’t stopped me from enjoying many of the other sequels/prequels/reboots of late, but I think this film in particular has been tailored for the fans. And after Tim Burton’s monstrous 2001 remake, they certainly deserve it.

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Below you’ll find my video review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which basically reiterates what I’ve scribed above with a great deal more immaturity and numerous bad puns:

Australian Box Office 14/8/11: Green Lantern the brightest star

Australian Box Office 4/9/2011: Horrible Bosses still on top

Australian Box Office 28/8/11: Horrible Bosses relates

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (Review)

The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (Review 2)

As a shorter, more straightforward documentary, this film might have worked fine. We are introduced to a series of archeologists, art historians and other scientists and academics who have been studying the cave since its discovery in 1994. Herzog and his tiny crew have received permission from the scientists and the French Minister of Culture to film the cave – the only time any filmmakers have been offered to chance to do so. Herzog is clearly fascinated by the cave, but it is equally clear that his interest is more philosophical than scientific. What this means, unfortunately, is that for every legitimate piece of information disseminated by interviewees, we get extended sequences of ponderous, often baffling voiceover from the filmmaker in charge. For every fascinating demonstration of the hunting tools used by the Neanderthals of the region, or scholarly analysis of the surprisingly sophisticated painting techniques that they employed in their wall art, we also get Herzog expounding about the meaning of life, art and humanity, on and on, to the point of utter tedium.

Even more arduous than Herzog’s voiceover is his use of 3D. There are individual moments – mostly close-ups of the paintings or still shots of the cavernous caves – that look great. But the rest of the time, the 3D is jarring, blurry to the point of incomprehensibility, and may very well leave viewers in actual physical pain. It’s a shame, given that unlike most recent 3D blockbusters, Herzog does seem to be attempting to use the technology as a means of artistic expression (rather than to bump the pictures’ box office take). But there is still no reason whatsoever for anything outside of the caves to be filmed in this headache inducing manner. Thankfully, the undeniable beauty of the cave – which sparkle with chemical deposits, and whose walls seem to come alive with primordial art – could not be repressed by even the nuttiest of directors.

Herzog’s unique approach does ensure that Cave of Forgotten Dreams has at least some entertainment value. By the time the film reaches its post-script, which bears seemingly no relevance whatsoever to the subject matter of the rest of the film, his archaic musings become so overwrought and incoherent that they may very well inadvertently provoke some laughs. But while Cave of Forgotten Dreams may be the most idiosyncratic nature documentary ever made, it is far from the most comprehensive. And if this really is – as Herzog suggests – the last time anyone will be allowed to shoot inside of this archeological marvel, I can’t help but feel that it was something of a waste.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams will screen again at Melbourne International Film Festival on Saturday August 6^th.

You can read our coverage of MIFF 2011 here.

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Tom Clift is a web-based film journalist from Melbourne, Australia. Visit his website here: http://reviewsbytom.blogspot.com.

MIFF 2011 Diary: Days 1-4

2011 Online Film Critics Society Awards

Give Up Tomorrow (MIFF Review)

The Liverpool Goalie (MIFF Mini Review)

Our picks of the 2011 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF)