Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #218: Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010).

A British archaeological team arrive in Finland to take drill core samples from the Korvantunturi mountains, a local fell believed to be the home of Joulupukki, a Finnish folklore figure who inspired contemporary versions of Santa Claus. Eavesdropping on them are two local boys, Juuso (Onni Tommila) and Pietari (Ilmari Jarvenpaa), who naturally are immediately fascinated. Then they go home and Juuso reads up on Santa, learning that he, at least here, was once quite naughty and not so nice himself. When local children start disappearing Juuso and Pietari start thinking that may be still true, and they try to spread word about it to their families. Now Juuso and his father Piiparinen (Rauno Juvonen) implement a plan to recover this Santa and give him to the company behind the archaelogical expedition to save the disappearing children. But this backfires when Juuso becomes one of them, and Santa's angry elves launch a recovery mission of their own.

I'd call this 2010 Finnish gem a family-friendly Christmas horror/fantasy fable. Writer-director Jalmari Helander seemingly draws upon holiday films as disparate as The Polar Express, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Gremlins and then mixes them together through his own country's folklore to concoct a Christmas movie unlike any other I've ever seen before, and it's evident he thoroughly enjoyed doing so. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale also gave me a very vivid insight into a culture and lifestyle entirely bereft of mine (I'm not even from the northern hemisphere, after all), and there's nothing more refreshing to me than the otherworldly feeling such a feeling can bring via art. I mean, just for starters in several scenes the characters wear shorts while walking in thick snow! (This also reminded me of a former neighbour of mine (RIP) from Norway, who never had to rug up for the Australian winter.) But I digress; the point of this movie, as with most, is the narrative, and that narrative enchanted me the entire way. It manages to be dark, whimsical, entertaining, intelligent and even somewhat touching near the end. Plus, the technical elements are strong even for a $2 million budget, and Juri and Miska Seppa's music is consistently fitting.

This one may be called Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, but more than rare exports it delivers a rare treat.  

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #217: Bedevil (1993).

Bedevil is an anthology film with three stories of indigenous Australian life in the Outback. First, Mr. Chuck tells the tale of a young Aboriginal boy haunted by the spirit of an American soldier who drowned in the nearby swamp. Several incidents from the boy's childhood are recounted through the soldier's perspective and that of a white woman descended from settlers of the local area. Second, in Choo Choo Choo Choo, Ruby (writer-director Tracey Moffatt) and her family endure terror from ghost trains running on a track beside their house; after witnessing a fatal tragedy involving them as a child; she returns many years later to face them again. Finally in Lovin' the Spin I'm In, Torres Strait Islander matriarch Imelda heads to north Queensland to stop her fleeing son Bebe and his love Minnie from marrying after their intention to marry meets with her opposition, tragedy strikes, but the couple's rebelliousness lingers.

This was the first Australian feature film by an indigenous female director and it was screened in the Un Certain Regard category at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. Those are both commendable and significant achievements, and Moffatt's intentions here to challenge indigenous stereotypes in recent Australian society are very important, but honestly I considered large chunks of this movie, especially visually, to be laughably dated. Lovin' the Spin I'm In was fully enjoyable but Mr. Chuck and Choo Choo Choo Choo have visual effects that look like they were literally painted on in post-production, so much so that I found them jarring to the point where I completely forgot about everything else including the narratives.  The relentlessly pounding score also enhanced this, but in fairness to that there are no didgeroos in it (I'm assuming that choice was made in keeping with Moffatt's afore-mentioned intentions to counter stereotypes).

The cast, which also includes Aussie cinema stalwarts Jack Charles and Lex Marinos, all try their best, and again its cultural achievements shouldn't be ignored or devalued, but its technical aspects have not aged well one bit. Therefore, Bedevil did not bedevil me.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #216: The Last Wave (1977).

 

We're in Sydney, some time in the 1970s. It's beset with bizarre rainstorms, and during one of them a group of Aboriginal men are socialising at a pub when things turn violent and one of them is killed. After the other four are then accused of murder, local white solicitor David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) is recruited to defend them. Despite specialising in corporate taxation and not criminal defense he accepts the case, only to then find his personal and professional lives spiralling out of control, especially when he begins experiencing strange and recurring premonitions about one of the suspects (a young David Gulpilil) and the weather.

After his mainstream breakthrough with 1975's Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir directed this assured and most unusual and intriguing mystery drama which obviously also touches very prominently on Australian race relations, as well as dreams, mythology and psychology. It's certainly Weir at his most experimental, but like with his very best films he takes his time to ensure the story is told as coherently, insightfully and objectively as possible. The screenplay he co-wrote with Tony Morphett and Petro Popescu is tightly plotted and balanced, the cast all invest their characters with presence and conviction, and Weir's regular cinematographer Russell Boyd shows signs of the Oscar-winning photography he would achieve with Weir's 2003 movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Its editing and score are maybe too conventional for a narrative as experimental as this film's, but despite those drawbacks The Last Wave is quite worthy of arguably Australia's greatest-ever filmmaker. 8/10. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #215: Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) (2019).

 

It's well-known that women's and girls' rights are horribly suppressed in the Middle East. They can't even publicly show their faces or go outside alone, for the most part. They are also brutally excluded from participating in sport, but that has changed (however incrementally) since 2007, when a nonprofit organisation named Skateistan was founded in Afghanistan as a skateboarding school for women and particularly girls. Carol Dysinger's 2019 documentary Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) explores Skateistan's history and impact.

Now, I do not mean to trivialise or ignore the reality of Middle East gender equality and violence at all but I must say, I don't understand how this won the 2019 Best Documentary, Short Subject Oscar. It's clearly sympathetic and well-intentioned, but I simply didn't feel it provided any new information, you know? Furthermore, Dysinger's aesthetic approach for me felt far too polished and refined for a study of such serious and topical issues. I think Life Overtakes Me deserved the gong. 6/10.

My views on the 2016 US election.

So if you follow this blog you'll know I've posted nothing but reviews since August; well, let me shake that up now and get on my soapbox. I've simply had nothing topical or personal to discuss here since then, but I do now. The US is, as you all know, set for another presidential election next month, with Democrat and Obama's former VP Joe Biden on track to defeat Trump, if the polls can be trusted. Personally, I sure as hell hope so.

Now, I acknowledge I'm not American, and Biden wouldn't have been my first choice for the Democratic nomination; I preferred Elizabeth Warren. But for the entire world's sake, I believe America needs to repudiate Trump regardless. Recently a friend of mine, who's less liberal than me but essentially moderate, said about George W. Bush that he, for all his ineptitude and reactionism, at least listened to people. Not only has Trump not done that, but like Nero in Rome, he has fiddled while America is burning (quite literally, in fact, given the California wildfires).

And now, alongside all the critical issues he has either responded insufficiently to or flat-out ignored, last week he contracted COVID-19 after openly and consistently refusing to wear a mask or self-isolate. This not only jeopardised his health - and by proxy his ability to do his job - but that of everybody with whom he came into contact while he was contagious. Meanwhile Biden, in several widely publicised moments, wore a mask.

I also have a few things to say about the presidential and vice-presidential debates here; I watched both live. The former was so rife with interrupting (mainly from Trump, but I concede Biden returned the favour at times) that I felt the real winner was moderator Chris Wallace for miraculously maintaining order and his temper. That hostility was partially why Kamala Harris and Mike Pence were separated by glass during their debate. By contrast, they were both a model of courtesy with each other, and when the fly landed on Pence's head I knew that moment would go viral.

But I digress; back to the election itself. I do not concur with Biden or Harris on everything, but come January I do hope they are moving into the White House, and that Trump and Pence leave it clean for them.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #214: Swim Team (2016).

 

The Jersey Hammerheads swim team, based in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, consists entirely of teenage swimmers on the autism spectrum; several of them are also non-Caucasian. Founding parent volunteers Maria and Michael McQuay supervise all their efforts and training in the pool. The documentary Swim Team focuses on three of the Hammerheads - the McQuays' son Mikey, Kelvin Truong and Robert Justino - and their parents, focusing on the boys' adolescent and athletic tribulations and aspirations, and their families' challenges with raising an autistic child.

Director Lara Stolman graduated from work as a TV news and documentary producer to documentarian with this solid effort that carefully mixes disability and sport. Firstly, the bad: I wish Stolman had given it a more imaginative title, and I (initially) felt true contempt for one of the boys' parents (no, neither of the McQuays) and I won't say why for spoiler reasons, but they did eventually redeem themselves in my book. But now, the good: Stolman investigates this team's efforts and all of their personal and family affairs very delicately and objectively, and with balance. She also showcases some breathtaking underwater photography from Laela Kilbourne, and smartly resists a music soundtrack with even a hint of heavy-handedness.

Now, I don't watch that many films of any kind about sport, but this is among the best of the ones I have seen about it and autism (or disability in general). It's a beautiful, honest and stereotype-challenging examination of that condition and while I don't quite give it a gold medal, I do give it a medal nonetheless. 8/10.