{"id":11225,"date":"2020-03-16T19:51:28","date_gmt":"2020-03-16T18:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11225"},"modified":"2020-03-16T19:52:31","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T18:52:31","slug":"manchester-international-film-festival-maniff-days-6-7-8-reviewed-by-peter-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11225","title":{"rendered":"<strong>Manchester International Film Festival (MANIFF) <\/strong>\u2013 Days 6, 7 &#038; 8 | reviewed by Peter Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Manchester International Film Festival (MANIFF) \u2013 Days 6, 7 &#038; 8<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/new-logoSME-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-11221\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/new-logoSME-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/new-logoSME.jpg 742w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the last of our short series of reviews from this year\u2019s Manchester International Film Festival, we skip merrily from Japan to China, then head on to France and Brazil, before finally ending up in New Orleans.<\/p>\n<p>We begin with a late night showing of Kinji Fukasaku\u2019s 2001 classic <em>Battle Royale<\/em>, a furious and bloody dystopian thriller in which a group of unruly schoolkids are deposited on an island to fight for their lives, overseen by that great stone-faced god of Japanese cinema, Takeshi Kitano. Whilst aspects of the film now seem curious (it\u2019s got all the hallmarks of a TV show and yet it isn\u2019t \u2018televised\u2019 to the populace at home, they just find out the winner), the violence and the worrying satirical bite remain firmly in place. <\/p>\n<p>Saturday begins with another classic, albeit of an altogether different stripe \u2013 <em>Battle Royale<\/em> is a blast, no doubt, but Ang Lee\u2019s <em>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon<\/em> is like a royal visit. As with <em>BR<\/em>, it\u2019s a couple of decades old, but it retains its majestic hold over the audience \u2013 from the quite literally soaring fight scenes (up walls and over rooftops, tip toeing over lakes, dancing atop trees) to the <em>Pulp Fiction<\/em>-esque narrative diversions (the whole middle third taking place in a desert, miles from the action of the plot), the quietly brooding love that simmers between the leads (Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh) and, of course, the ferocity of Zhang Ziyi. <em>Crouching Tiger<\/em> might well be Ang Lee\u2019s best film (although honourable mention must go to <em>The Ice Storm<\/em>, another beauty that has aged well). <\/p>\n<p>Speaking of beauties, it\u2019s always great to see a film you know little about and find yourself transported. Writer-director Jeremy Laval\u2019s <em>NOISE<\/em> concerns a deaf man, Vincent, played by Guillaume Duhesme, who finds he can hear the thoughts of others (not the blessing you might think it is). Drawn into a mystery by Alice (played by Anne Hathaway-a-like B\u00e9rang\u00e8re Mc Neese), the receptionist in his cynical doctor\u2019s office, Vincent finds himself spying on a gang of thugs who may or may not have made off with Alice\u2019s sister. Like <em>Parasite<\/em>, <em>NOISE<\/em> is a film that continues to twist as it makes throughout its 105 minute running time \u2013 and its climax recalls nothing quite so much as that of Stephen King\u2019s <em>Firestarter<\/em> (when Drew Barrymore\u2019s dad, David Keith, just had to \u2018push\u2019 the bad guys to get then to do what he needed them to\u2026). <\/p>\n<p>After scaling the dizzy heights with <em>Crouching Tiger<\/em> and <em>NOISE<\/em>, we were due a dog, and that came in the shape of Brazilian film director Bruno Bini\u2019s <em>Loop<\/em>. Not to be confused with the inestimably superior <em>Looper<\/em>, although both are time travel capers. There the similarity ends. Daniel, a student of time travel, opens his eyes to find his girlfriend breathing her last and a man, whose face we never see, telling him to get there earlier. Daniel puts his all into researching time travel (there must be way, right?) and studying the serial killer (known as the Mailman!) who killed his girlfriend. We\u2019ll say nothing further beyond suggesting that you could probably map out every twist and turn just from the scant details we\u2019ve given you here. <\/p>\n<p>We end our festival with Michael Murphy\u2019s New Orleans documentary, <em>Up From the Streets<\/em>. If you\u2019ve seen any of David Simon\u2019s <em>Treme<\/em>, you\u2019ll have a good idea what to expect here: marches through the streets of New Orleans featuring gospel singers and Native Americans, shots of people eating gumbo, lots and lots of bands playing in (for the most part) seedy clubs and run down dives once frequented by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and Jelly Roll Morton, patched together with a rag bag history of jazz, the Civil Rights movement and Hurricane Katrina, amongst fifty or sixty other things. It\u2019s not entirely successful (and does, at times, feel like it was constructed by a group of musicians in a bar at last orders, everyone hollering to include Dr John, and Professor Longhair and Buddy Bolden and\u2026 the list goes on and on). And yet, for all that, there is enough joy and enough great music to (just about) keep your toes tapping throughout.   <\/p>\n<p>Before we bow out of our Festival coverage we must make honourable mention of the vast array of films we were excited by that we didn\u2019t get a chance to see \u2013 any of the Maxine Peake shorts, the Ben Whishaw short, the Alice Lowe short \u2018Innocence\u2019, Tim Burgess in \u2018The Bookshop\u2019, the Billie Holliday documentary, the AI doc <em>Machine<\/em>\u2026 so many films and not enough hours in the day. Maybe next year we\u2019ll take the week off work, clone ourselves and watch everything\u2026 <\/p>\n<p><strong>by Peter Wild<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Manchester International Film Festival (MANIFF) \u2013 Days 6, 7 &#038; 8 In the last of our short series of reviews from this year\u2019s Manchester International Film Festival, we skip merrily from Japan to China, then head on to France and Brazil, before finally ending up in New Orleans. We begin with a late night showing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[14,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Manchester International Film Festival (MANIFF) \u2013 Days 6, 7 &amp; 8 | reviewed by Peter Wild - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=11225\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Manchester International Film Festival (MANIFF) \u2013 Days 6, 7 &amp; 8 | reviewed by Peter Wild - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Manchester International Film Festival (MANIFF) \u2013 Days 6, 7 &#038; 8 In the last of our short series of reviews from this year\u2019s Manchester International Film Festival, we skip merrily from Japan to China, then head on to France and Brazil, before finally ending up in New Orleans. 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