With a tight schedule, a minimum to writing facilities and fatigue it is hard to write a daily report, hence the lack of updates yesterday. Monday started with two films from Down Under, A Song of Good and Men’s Group. DV really seems to be the trend these days even though it looks plain ugly. Tuesday started with Unfinished Sky, the Japanese drama This World of Ours and the film noir/conspiracy thriller Able Danger (not reviewed here).
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Saturday and Sunday I saw some pretty amazing things and the festival finally seems to hit me (besides serious lack of sleep). One of the films I saw, No Country for Old Men, by the Coen brothers was already reviewed by my colleague Denise a little while ago. I throroughly enjoyed it even though I am not a huge Coens aficionado. For me Saturday started with the French animated compilation Fear(s) of the Dark, followed by the much anticipated Iranian/French animated film Persepolis. Sunday began with the new Wes Anderson film, The Darjeeling Limited, followed by the experimental rubbish of Lucky 7 (not reviewed in this report – it was really that bad). The weekend ended with a documentary about David Lynch, simply called LYNCH
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Friday started with You, The Living by the director of the hilarious Swedish Songs from the Second Floor, Roy Andersson. Second was the critically acclaimed pregnancy drama/comedy Juno, starring Ellen Page and Jennifer Garner, that is destined to become the favorite for the KPN audience award that is presented on Friday February 1. This rather modest day (due to some changes in my program) ended with the much anticipated but disappointing Thai horror flick The Unseeable.
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Every year the IFFR places several directors in the spotlight, by tagging them as ‘Filmmaker in Focus’. This year the honor goes to three directors, knowing American director Robert Breer, Russian Svetlana Proskurina and the Japanese director Kobayashi Masahiro. These directors have extensive oeuvres that deserve more international promotion.

The first official day of the festival is filled with four films. I started with the Brazilian Tiger nominee Still Urangutans, followed with my first Kobayashi film ever, Bootleg Film. Then there was the musical/documentary of Talking Heads frontman, True Stories. Last on the list was the documentary The Reinactors about the impersonators on Hollywood Blvd. who try to make a living by having their pictures taken with tourists.
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The opening night of the IFFR started with the premiere of the Argentinean Cordero de Dios (Lamb of God), the second Argentinean opening film in a row in two years. The screening followed the speech of the new director of the festival Rutger Wolfson who emphasized the new media around us that allow us to watch films wherever we want and when we want. It made him wonder if a festival such as the IFFR will have reason to exist in the future. This speech, that lacked true vision and zest, very much coincided with the last speech of the previous director Sandra den Hamer, who was honored by the mayor of Rotterdam with a medal stating ‘Tigers are a girl’s best friend’ (the tiger being the official mascot of the IFFR).
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Like The Goonies, The Monster Squad congers up memories of my childhood. I remember the first time I saw it, when I was around 8 or 9 years old, and thought how awesome it was that you had all these classic movie monsters on one screen AND have a group of kids fight them. So when I finally got the chance to watch it again after nearly two decades, I was enthusiastic as ever. It was like opening up a time capsule, now encased in a two disk DVD. Yet, after about half-way through I realized that like Pop Rocks and Santa Claus, I had outgrown The Monster Squad.
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OK, I’ll keep this short : what a load of shite! Good God, it’s been a while since I watched such a crap film. Annabelle (Erin Kelly), the seventeen-year-old daughter of a senator, is packed off to a Catholic girl’s boarding school after being expelled from her two previous schools. Pretty girls in uniform, stuck on campus and feeling rebellious is a promising arena for some forbidden love and steamy sex scenes, but boy did they f*ck this one up.

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From Wednesday January 23 up to and including Sunday February 3 the 37th International Film Festival (IFFR) will take place in, well… Rotterdam of course. This year’s program is led by the new director Rutger Wolfson, who replaces Sandra den Hamer. As was the case in the past few years, Choking on Popcorn will cover the festival for the full ten days and will bring impressions as well as (short) reviews on a daily basis. This year’s festival is dominated by films from Brazil, France, India and the rest of Asia, which is part of the festival’s tradition. The focus is on films that would normally not reach the European and American screens.
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Writing a review about Cloverfield, the much anticipated J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost) project is an impossible task. The only way you could possibly read a review about it is AFTER you’ve seen it. Every discription of the film’s plot would give away too much. Sticking to what is shown in the (teaser) trailers brings the conclusion it is about a group of partying youngsters who get attacked by something big and devastating. And among them the rest of Manhattan. Now hold your horses, because you can proceed, because this is all I will reveal about the story. So hardly any relevant spoilers ahead.
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Gus van Sant’s 2003’s Elephant added an important flare to the authentic portfolio of the director. Van Sant used local Oregon high school students, thus adding extra realism to his stance on the US high school shootings. Not only was the director able to get amazing natural acting performances from his self-appointed cast, it also made the presence of a political opinon completely unnecesary. Van Sant’s efforts for Elephant seemed a one time experiment, considering the rather lousy Last Days. However, the filmmaker picked up where Elephant left off with his latest endeavour, Paranoid Park.
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