THE TIME OF THE WOLF - The last movie I scheduled for this year's festival was Le Temps du Loups ("Time of the Wolf"), the stark and disturbing French apocalyptic drama by starring the beautiful Isabelle Huppert. Huppert plays the mother of a teenage girl and young son who at the beginning of the film arrives with her husband at a cabin, piled with supplies to ride out an unspecified environmental disaster. However, they find that the cabin is already occupied by another desperate family. Within the first few minutes of the film, the husband is dead and Huppert is forced to take her children and flee. Director Michael Haneke has written a real drama, not an adventure or a fantasy, of what might happen to a middle class family forced to live like refugees in their own country, meeting other real people also struggling to survive in the first few days after striking out into the countryside. With only what supplies and possessions they can carry, the family begs, salvages what they can pushing only a bike for transportation. Although their circumstances are dire, the conflict is almost as extreme internally as it is externally. Huppert's portrait of a city-bred mother is sympathetic even as she makes poor decisions and tries to enforce her leadership over her increasingly rebellious daughter and emotionally wounded son. The story is eventually taken over by the story of the young daughter who, through her eyes, sees the breakdown in civility and reason among the people they meet and who tries to reach out to a young boy who has become one of the wolves who prey on the others. Although people die and fight in this film, it never contains fake histrionics or fantastic elements. Despite its modern-ish setting it has the faint feel of medievalism. Indeed, in other times (and right now in many places of the world), these events were common place. There are no bikers roaming the countryside or rogue soldiers. The villains in the film are shown to be just as human as any others, just pushed to make the decision to become exploiters or mini-tyrants. One of the end scenes where one character holds the other saying: "everything will be all right", is neither reassuring or entirely cynical. Days after seeing this film I am still thinking about it.

More proof that we are living in the 21st century. Read this CBS News story on a doctor who is using a mobile robot with a screen and camera to remotely visit his patients in a hospital. The doctor stays in his office and guides the robot via joystick, driving the robot around the halls of the hospital and visiting with patients. The patients see the doctor's face in the screen at the 'head' of the robot named "Chip". Be sure to watch the video. In-Touch Health developed the robot.

ARAHAN: URBAN MARTIAL ARTS ACTION - A live action Korean martial arts comic that draws a bit on Shaolin Soccer continuing a tradition of decent wire work, CG magic and comedy to become the VIFF's real crowd pleaser. In modern day Korea a hapless police trainee has a chance encounter with a high flying female martial artist and decides to join her school for purely selfish reasons: just so he can learn the art of 'Palm Blast' and get revenge on a group of thugs who beat him shamefully at the beginning of the picture. However, her school is decrepit and the instructors are doddering incompetents, or at least they seem to be. In fact they are hiding a 'key' to ultimate ch'i power, a key that a long imprisoned marital arts master who has been freed by a construction crew now seeks. Of course it comes down to the two young students to save the world from the evil master. Arahan rates well in the comedy department and is fair to decent in the fight choreography with a good combination of hand-to-hand, weapons work and wire fighting. The characters are fairly stock, however, and the degree of freshness is well past due. Compared to its progenitors, Shaolin Soccer, Volcano High, and, yes, The Matrix, Arahan doesn't advance anything in the genre.

CLEAN - Maggie Cheung shows she's a good actress in three languages, playing a junkie trying to escape the junkie life she lead which claims the life of her punk rocker husband and has estranged them from their son. On the road in Hamilton, Ontario, Cheung has a falling out with her husband, an aging punk rock legend who dies in an overdose. Their son has been living in Vancouver with the grandparents, one of whom is Nick Nolte who for once plays the responsible older man in a movie about substance abuse. When Nolte informs her that they want her to stay away for a few years Cheung resolves to pick up the pieces of her life. Back in Paris, Cheung is still addicted but to methadone. Blamed for the death of her husband, she is forced to look up even older friends, some good, some bad. The rest of the movie is a series of false starts as she slowly learns humility, responsibility and how to get rid of the habit. Those expecting some grimy sombre story about how a junkie grows up will instead get a film that is always hopeful and on an even keel. Cheung never hits the same kind of bottom you may have seen in other junkie movies and her big come down in the film is that she eventually accepts a job that requires her to wear every day clothes, not the hip 'street' gear she does throughout the film. With a more histrionic actress the film might have raised more 'so what' questions than it does but Maggie Cheung is so radiant, no matter what her situation, you can't help but root for her in her journey to meet her son again. In French, English and Cantonese, whatever she is speaking, she projects the aura of a modern day Ingrid Bergman: always noble no matter the character's position. Oliver Assayas, who directed the glitzy fake corporate world of Demonlover, uses his lens this time to give authenticity to a series of urban settings, Hamilton's gushing steel factories, smoky bars in Paris, cluttered kitch apartments. It's the beautiful world of the not-so downtrodden.

COP FESTIVAL RELOADED - This is a sequel to last year's screening of a series of shorts where the directors (all shooting on DV) were asked to follow simple rules for their ten minute masterpieces. This year the rules were 1) It has to involve a Cop 2) It has to be under 10 minutes in length 3) Something stupid has to happen every minute. In that, all of them were entirely successful. The highlights, "Love Juice Detective", about a woman cop who assassinates criminals by masturbating furiously so she can spray an acidic stream of her juice into their faces .. that is, until she meets her match. "Detective Q", a documentary about an officer who mysteriously attracts people to follow behind him wherever he goes. "Ultramasu Cop" about a cop from outer space whose task is to stick his finger up the ass of director Takashi Miike. There were eight of them and all were good for a chuckle.

NOBODY HOME: The Cop Festival was preceded by an effective twenty minute Hitchcockian short again shot on DV about a young woman who comes home and watches tape of who has come to her door while she was out and left 'video messages' to the security camera. The first visitors are funny and strange but then they become increasingly bizarre until ... well there is a twist that I could see coming but is nevertheless creepy.

IZO - Another grab bag, hit and miss effort from Takashi Miike. Around twenty minutes too long, Izo is a nearly formless revenge odyssey leaping across time and space. Izo is the spirit or some kind of spiritual manifestation of an executed samurai who for some reason is now charging across dimensions chopping apart everyone. A typical scene has the warrior blast into a scene, being challenged by other soldiers or Yakuza or samurai or schoolgirls or demons or witches and then chopping them into pieces and then running off, more slicked up with gore than when he entered. There is some giddy fun in watching the first few battles but then I never quite figured out just what the purpose was. There is some kind of metaphysical conspiracy going on involving godlike figures (including Takeshi Kitano as the Prime Minister of the group), some kind of infinite struggle that goes on and on and on. Interspersed is a pan-like character who strums a latin guitar and sings a painfully grotted out folk song. I nodded off more than once.