In this strange game of eye-hurting attrition and film reviewing stamina known as MIFF’s 2011 blog-a-thon challenge, I am now past the quarter way mark in my quest to watch and review 60 films in 17 days. With day four done and dusted, I’ve notched up 18 feature film screenings, with my previous three days spent as such: five films yesterday, four the day before and four the day before that.

I seem to have overcome, or at least effectively disguised, some of the mental hiccups I projected over the weekend. For an hour or two on Sunday I thought it was Monday (and couldn’t work out why Crikey hadn’t published any news stories) and in the evening, sharing dumplings with friends prior to a 9pm screening of 13 Assassins, I was convinced it was Friday. I have no real explanation except for this: when you see such a large number of films in such a short amount of time, the surreal part of the experience is not going in to the cinema but coming out. Reality, as Bob Dylan once said, has always had too many heads. Unfortunately human beings — especially us film reviewers, with merely two eyes and plenty of copy to write — have only one.

Here’s my wrap-up from yesterday, with write-ups for Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, Win Win, Detroit Wild City, 33 Postcards and The Unjust. Today I’ll be watching The Stoker, Viva Las Vegas (woot woot, Elvis, woot woot), Bobby Fischer Against the World and Face to Face. But before then, I emerge from my study and kick-off my day with a pick-me-up trick I learned in Japan: cheap red wine mixed with ginger ale. Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.

TTFN.

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The strength of every documentary, so the traditional argument goes, lies ultimately with its subject. That logic propels documentarians to reach for the stars when they could – as this oddly titled and oddly fascinating film from director Jon Foy exemplifies – be casting their eyes to the ground.

Foy’s who-what-why-dunit Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (film #14) explores a curious but seemingly unsophisticated phenomenon: the appearance of thousands of DIY plaques or “tiles” on roads and highways across America, since the 1980′s up until today, spelling out the same nine words. Toynbee tiles vary in design but here’s what a typical one looks like, and here’s what they say:

Tonnbee tiles

In the 90′s American Artist Justin Duerr became obsessed with solving the Toynbee mystery . Who is planting the tiles and what are their motivations? What does the message mean? Is it some sort of clever code pointing towards a deep hidden philosophy or merely the fruits of a bored crazy person’s labours?

Resurrect Dead follows the investigations of Duerr and two other budding sleuths as they follow leads, chase down red herrings and attempt to join the dots. The more layers of the onion they peel, the stranger it gets, with a David Mammet play, a Stanley Kubrick movie, a wacky underground organisation and a short wave radio show linked to the mystery.

Things truly take a 180 degree turn down Weird Avenue when the trio find a man who vividly remembers watching TV in the mid 80′s, when something very odd happened: a news broadcast was interrupted by a voice speaking words almost identical to the Toynbee message. He’s perfectly sane, and it can’t be a coincidence. But why? Why? Whhhhyyyy?

Foy’s riveting film spirals from a basic investigation into street art origins into far broader subjects: a person or persons quest to circumvent mainstream media, a study in meaning and motivations, a portrait of obsession and paranoia, and, larger still, mind-boggling food for thought that extends as far as the heavens — in particular a compellingly kooky idea about how an afterlife will be constructed by humans using science provided by God.

What’s the link between these ideas and splotches of beneath-the-foot art? No spoilers here. But I do have a prediction: expect to see this brilliant slice of weirder-than-reality non-fiction nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar next year. And if it isn’t, that will be provide mystery equally as baffling as the Toynbee.

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Imagine that sickeningly syrupy Sandra Bullock movie The Blind Side (about a sporty wrong side of the tracks kid who gets adopted into a compassionate middle-class family) done right – really, really right – and you get something like writer/director Thomas McCarthy’s Win Win (film #15), featuring another captivating droopy-eyed performance from Paul Giammatti in middle-aged meltdown mode.

Giamatti plays Mike Flaherty, a lawyer with a struggling practice who moonlights as a high school wrestling coach. He remains a sympathetic character throughout, even after he commits a bad breach of ethics that propels the story.

Flaherty’s wealthy elderly client Leo (Burt Young) has been declared incapacitated by the state but wants to remain living in his home. In order to pocket $1500 a month in guardian payments, Flaherty becomes Leo’s official carer but cheats the deal by plonking him a nursing home. Leo’s grandson Kyle (Alex Shaffer) arrives unexpectedly and, with nowhere else to go, stays with Flaherty, his wife (Amy Young) and little young girls. In a convenient storytelling twist, turns out Kyle is an excellent wrestler, and the family quickly take to him before his druggie mother Cindy (Melanie Lynskey) arrives to muddy the waters and potentially exposure Flahert’s shameful money grab.

Win Win is a quirky and touching bittersweet film that contemplates moral complexities smartly and sensitively. Like Little Miss Sunshine, another crowd-pleasing family-oriented dramedy jointly fused with humour and sadness, it bridges the gap between indie and mainstream cinema, with the quirks of the first and the broad appeals of the latter.

It’s obvious that a great deal of thought and consideration has been poured into all the characters; even how Alex’s wrestling abilities can be used to accentuate dramatic pivots rather than for generating cheer-from-the-sidelines Mighty Ducks style whooping. McCarthy’s direction is near flawless, and so too is this wonderful film.

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It’s the stuff they don’t show you on the brochure, if indeed derelict ol’ Detroit still has one: a washed-up crime-stricken city that looks as broken down and abandoned as any post-apocalypse movie set.

The point is hammered home rather obviously and rather continuously in French filmmaker Florent Tillon’s strangely titled (put it down to the translation, but still…) Detroit Wild City (film #16) that this is no place to live in, visit or, should you be flying over or observing from space, glancing in the general direction of and that the people there are poor suns-a-bitches doing it tough.

Tillon mingles with the locals: a group who demolish abandoned buildings without machinery, an animal control employee who explains that nobody but nobody owns any dogs other than pit bulls in this ‘ere town, people forced get back to basics i.e. returning to a rustic farming existence, the owner of a local bar, etcetera.

With a clean, crisp lens that soaks up like a high-powered sponge the sparsely captivating environment around it, Detroit Wild City is a case of too much how and not enough why. We get a vivid sense of how greatly Detroit is rooted but scant explanation about what led to its current state.

Assuming an implied knowledge of the GFC is not enough. Has the city been slowly crumbling for decades? How does its economy and living standards compare in relation to other cities? You won’t none of those answers here, which unintentionally adds to the sense of sad vacuousness Tillon’s two-thirds-of-a-good-film evokes.

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An Australia/Chinese co-production no doubt aspiring to the box office success of Bruce Beresford’s Mao’s Last Dancer, director Pauline Chan’s 33 Postcards (film #17) is an interesting albeit homogenized fusion of culture clash, prison and crime drama.

Chirpy 16-year-old Chinese orphan Mei Mei (Zhu Lin) visits Australia with a choir of young girls to participate in the Australian Choir Festival and to meet her long time sponsor, a decent, twitchy fellow named Dean (Guy Pearce). It doesn’t faze Mei Mei to discover Dean is in the slammer; in fact, she ingratiates herself – unbeknownst to him – with his old crew of crooks as they prepare for their next “big job.”

The crucial relationship between Mei Mei and Dean, developed through prison visitations scenes, works on a basic emotional level. Guy Pearce’s performance is deft at projecting internal emotions and his character evolves well as the story progresses. Mei Mei needed more gravity; Zhu Lin’s ignorant fish out of water shtick is believable but only just.

The knowledge that Mei Mei is the leader of a group of girls in a travelling choir, ascertained early in the story, prompts the ominous assumption that there may be a Mr Holland’s Opus moment come game’s end. To their credit, the screenwriters unexpectedly complicate what could have a soppy and predictable story only to have their valuable work eventually undone in favour of box office potential and exportability.

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What better way to cap off a long day at the cinema – a day with far more hours consumed staring at a screen than not – with the hot-blooded police corruption scorcher The Unjust (film 18), South Korea’s answer to Blue Murder, Infernal Affairs and The Departed.

Director Ryoo Seung-wan slices open a rotten onion of deceit, cover-ups, back-stabbing and betrayal as the Seoul police force attempt to solve – or more accurately “resolve” – a rash of serial killings. A crazy-eyed cast provide vein-bulging performances and Seung-wan loads the film with hard-boiled aplomb, a frenetic pace and dense plotting.

Previous MIFF posts:

• Crazy stop motion, psychedelic fruits, Everybody Loves Kostya and samurai assassins go nuts (MIFF: Day 3)
• Broken dreams, crowded cemeteries and taking shelter from storms (MIFF: Day 2)
• Half midnight mini mental update (MIFF: Day 2)
• Ménage à trois, vintage Scorcese, Joan of Aaah When’s it Over? and a hobo with a shotty (MIFF: Day 1)
• Fairies, a hissing microphone, red onion tart canapes and fine company (Opening Night: MIFF 2011)
• Covering the 2011 Melbourne International Film Festival