Category: Film Page 68 of 101

Review: Change of Plans

On November 23, 2010

[Rating:3.5/5]

“Everyone pretends they’re fine.” So says one of the characters toward the end of Danièle Thompson’s new ensemble comedy Change of Plans. It’s not a particularly profound statement or one that can’t be found in plenty of other movies, but it does describe pretty accurately the state of affairs among the characters in the film. They first meet attending a dinner party put on by Marie-Laurence (nicknamed ML) and Piotr, a married couple struggling a bit with their marriage. The other guests include ML’s sister and her new beau, a potential new boss, some old friends, and a flamenco teacher – in other words, various backgrounds, degrees of connection to ML and Piotr, and a wide range of intimacy with them.

As they gather for dinner, it becomes clear that potential boss Lucas and his wife Sarah are very not happy together, that friend Melanie is about to leave her husband Alain, that one of the guests has had an affair with ML, and that sister Juliette’s new beau is as old as their father – who, by the way, drops by nearly unannounced, much to Juliette’s chagrin. She hasn’t spoken to him for years. The dinner party continues, focusing on building character, relationships, and drama through dialogue. Dialogue which both hides and reveals each character’s unhappiness, joy, and desire – the ways they’re pretending to be fine and the ways they really are not.

About half-way through, the film jumps forward a year – ML is planning another party and trying to get the same group together again. Many things have changed, others haven’t, and as the film continues, it jumps back and forth between the two time periods, gradually revealing how circumstances have changed in between. It’s quite a good structural device, allowing us to adjust our point of view on the earlier dinner party as more things are revealed from the future time period, while also encouraging us to care about the changes that have happened to the characters we’ve come to know from the first half of the film.

There’s a lot to like about the film, especially if you like almost comedy-of-manners sort of films, built on dialogue and small character reveals rather than overt drama or major events. There are a few big dramatic events, but most of them – a car accident that affects one character for the second half of the film, the events that drove Juliette and her father apart, etc. – occur offscreen and are talked about rather than seen. It’s tough to make that effective, but Thompson (and her son Christopher, the screenwriter) do a fine job of keeping interest up without straying far from their chosen mode of subtle conversational development.

I’ve actually warmed to the film a little since seeing it, but though I enjoyed its quiet way of going about its story and appreciate that style in comparison to so many films’ dependence on bombast, it still strikes me as not particularly memorable over the long run. Which is pretty much how I feel about Thompson’s earlier film Avenue Montaigne, which I quite enjoyed and generally recommend to people who enjoy cute, meandering ensemble films with a French sensibility, but of which I remember very little actual plot or character points. They’re nice films, but they don’t really grab you in any lasting way, which I think is due more to the fact that they kind of just stop without giving you any feeling of insight (I do not mean a message or a “point”, just to be clear – I mean some sense that you’ve felt or understood something, even something that you can’t put into words, that you hadn’t before) out of all these people’s lives.

So it’s a good film, and one that certainly you’ll enjoy if you like films of this sort, and that’s about as far as it goes. I won’t say it left me unsatisfied, because that’s about what I expected, but I feel that Thompson and Thompson are quite good at weaving ensembles together and at writing dialogue-heavy scenes that work, and I feel like they could create something profound if they’d push things a little further and go for real depth instead of superficial metaphors.

Review: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

By Jandy

On November 16, 2010

In Film

[Rating:3.5/5]

Originally posted on Row Three.

The Millennium Trilogy of films has been a bit of a rollercoaster for me – first chapter The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remains among my favorite films of the year, while its follow-up The Girl Who Played With Fire left me cold and disappointed. Going into the final film in the series, I was pretty much just hoping I would like it better than I did The Girl Who Played With Fire. And I did, though how much of that is due merely to tempered expectations I’m not entirely sure. In any case, if you did like The Girl Who Played With Fire, you’ll probably quite enjoy The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, as it’s a really good sequel to that film, though still not up to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo for me in either story or style. Okay, enough with the trilogy comparisons. I’m tired of typing these titles out.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest picks up right where the previous film left off, with a badly injured Lisbeth Salander being taken off to the hospital by a medivac crew. But her troubles aren’t over yet – she’s to stand trial for the murders pinned on her in the second chapter, plus the attempted murder of her father Alexander Zolochenko. Yeah, he didn’t die, though he’s in pretty bad shape, too. While she recovers in the hospital before her trial, Mikael Blomkvist returns to Millennium to put together a special issue intended to prove Lisbeth’s innocence as well as reveal her mistreatment at the hands of the state throughout her life. In a way, it covers similar plot ground to the second film, but more so, and to an actual conclusion.

A lot of this film is taken up with a conspiracy within the Swedish government to protect Russian defector Zolochenko, and the lengths the remaining members (most of whom are aged, as the group was formed in the sixties) go to in order to maintain their cover and silence both Zolochenko and Lisbeth. I’m not sure if I missed some important subtitles somewhere along the line or if there’s a bunch of exposition somewhere in The Girl Who Played With Fire that I forgot, but I had some trouble figuring out exactly what this whole conspiracy was about, what they were trying to do, and why Lisbeth was so important to them. I’d be curious if this is any clearer from the books, but I haven’t read these two – perhaps someone who has could at least let me know if it’s worth reading them to answer all the “but…why?” notes I wrote while watching.

In any case, it may be a positive sign that I still found myself invested in the film and caring what happened. All the courtroom scenes are fantastic, and perhaps show Lisbeth’s particular way of handling herself when she’s forced to interact with other people better than anything in the whole series. She’s sporting a new look for them, too, as you can see in the screencaps (she only adopts the punk look for the trial, part of her general no compromise stance – and it looks awesome). I also quite liked the subplots dealing with Millennium itself and Mikael’s relationship with Erika, which was kind of skimmed over in the other films. The callbacks to previous events are nicely handled as well.

However, as this one does follow right on the heels of The Girl Who Played With Fire, it still has many of the same elements that disappointed me in that film – it’s still wholly focused on Lisbeth, while I preferred the first film’s thematically-related but distinct mystery, and it still has Lisbeth and Blomkvist working largely separately throughout the whole film. In addition, I wanted Lisbeth to have a little more agency than she does – unfortunately, she’s fairly passive this time around, only given some real action toward the end. On the other hand, some of her character moments shine the brightest here, and I really appreciated some of the quietness after the almost comic-book-action-hero Lisbeth we got in the second film.

In addition to the conspiracy not really being that clear, there are other plot issues that had me scratching me head a time or two wondering how exactly we got from there to here, but like I said, lowered expectations probably helped a lot, and it finished off the story begun in The Girl Who Played With Fire pretty well. I still don’t think either film compares with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but perhaps thinking of that one as a standalone and these two as a separate two-part story will make all three of them rate a little higher. In any case, Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyquist continue to play their characters with conviction that makes them rise above whatever issues the film has, and they will be what you remember.

AFI Fest 2010: A Biased Preview

By Jandy

On October 25, 2010

In Film

*slow connection warning – many videos embedded*

Festival season for 2010 is starting to wind down now, but there’s at least one more big one in Los Angeles – the American Film Market and its less-industry-insidery sister the AFI Film Festival. I find myself more drawn to the mind-set of the AFI Film Fest side, both because it’s more cost-effective to attend (read: free, thanks to Audi’s sponsorship which allows them to offer free tickets to every screening) and because it has more of a goal of sharing the best films of the festival season with people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to go to festivals at all, as opposed to AFM’s goal of buying and selling indie films for distribution.

In any case, the AFI Film Fest is going down November 4-11 in Hollywood; they released the full schedule today and will start releasing those free tickets on Thursday, so if you’re in LA, figure out your picks and get ready to jump on the AFI website and reserve tickets for the ones you’re interested in. Don’t be alarmed if the things you want don’t show tickets available when you look – they release tickets throughout the festival week, so get what you can and keep checking with the box office once the festival starts.

Following is a list of all the films playing along with all the trailers I could find, in an extremely biased order – basically, the things I want to see the most down to the things I don’t care about or am avoiding. This doesn’t exactly correlate to what I’ll be seeing, because my press credentials don’t actually let me into the big-name gala screenings at all (without special credentials for which I did not bother to apply), so stuff near the top like Black Swan and Blue Valentine I probably won’t see here, but if last year is any indication, it was definitely possible for ordinary moviegoers to get into these big films via the rush line on the night of, so don’t let my decisions to not go to most of the galas stop you if that’s what you want to see.

My reviews of the films I see will be going up on Row Three first, probably only crossposted here later, or else crossposted as an excerpt with a link. So check over there for coverage once the festival starts.

Heartbeats

dir: Xavier Dolan; starring Xavier Dolan, Niels Schneider, Monia Chokri, Anne Dorval. Canada.

Xavier Dolan’s debut film I Killed My Mother was my favorite film of last year’s AFI Film Fest, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting this follow-up, which evokes so much Nouvelle Vague style I can hardly wait. AFI Film Guide

Rubber

dir: Quentin Dupieux; starring Stephen Spinella, Roxane Mesquida, Jack Plotnick. USA.

A rubber tire develops sentience and goes on a homicidal killing spree. Yes. A rubber tire. Sentience. Homicidal killing spree. Add into that a meta-level commentary provided by a sort of Greek chorus that, based on what I’ve read, turns the film into an absurdist inquiry into filmmaking itself, and I am there. Sounds like the perfect cult film for me. AFI Film Guide

Black Swan

dir: Darren Aronofsky; starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis. USA.

I’m always interested in what Darren Aronofsky comes up with, and this is no exception. Just watch the trailer below. This looks trippy and intense as all get-out, and the reviews from TIFF have been almost uniformly glowing. This is the closing night gala film at AFI, so it will likely be difficult to impossible to get into, but still. I’m tempted to try, even though it’ll be out in a few weeks anyway. AFI Film Guide

LiTTLEROCK

dir: Mike Ott; starring Atsuko Okatsuka, Rintaro Sawamoto, Cory Zacharia, Roberto Sanchez. USA.

I always like to pick a few poetic indie-looking films, and this looks to be the best bet this year. A look at someplace fairly recognizable to movie audiences (rural California) through the eyes of a couple to whom it is utterly unfamiliar – two Japanese tourists. It comes with recommendation from Row Three-er Marina, so I’m definitely keeping this near the top of my list. AFI Film Guide

Blue Valentine

dir: Derek Cianfrance; starring Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams. USA.

This premiered at Sundance, so it’s been hitting the festival circuit for a while and getting great reviews the whole time, both for its unflinching yet tender look at a failing marriage and stunning performances from both Gosling and Williams. I can already tell you it’s likely to hit a few top ten lists at Row Three this year. AFI Film Guide

Julia’s Eyes

dir: Guillem Morales; starring Belén Rueda, Lluis Homar. Spain.

Any time Guillermo Del Toro’s name is attached to a project, even as producer, it’s worth getting excited about, and with the main star from The Orphanage back on board for this atmospheric chiller, I’m totally there. AFI Film Guide

Cargo

dir: Ivan Engler, Ralph Eter; starring Anna Katharine Schwabroh, Martin Rapold, Michael Finger. Switzerland.

I’m always interested in indie sci-fi, especially if it’s from another country – this is Switzerland’s first sci-fi movie ever, and I’m totally down for that. The story, set in world after Earth ceases to be habitable, follows a young woman who agrees to an 8-year contract on a cargo ship to try to make enough money to move from an overcrowded space station to the utopian planet RHEA. But all isn’t as it seems on the cargo ship. AFI Film Guide

Blank City

dir: Céline Danhier; featuring Lizzie Borden, Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, Debbie Harry. USA.

This documentary about early ’70s “No Wave” filmmakers, somewhere on the cusp of avantgarde and art and punk and DIY, looks absolutely fascinating. I’m going to miss it due to a scheduling conflict, but I’m certainly going to try to seek it out later. AFI Film Guide

13 Assassins

dir: Takashi Miike; starring Kôji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada, Yusuke Iseya. Japan.

I’ve never seen a Takashi Miike film, but running in genre circles like I do now, I hear his name a lot. This seems like quite a fine introduction, a samurai film about a band of hired killers tasked with assassinating the Shogun’s brother against overwhelming odds. Buzz from other fests has been positive. AFI Film Guide

Chico & Rita

dir: Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal, Tono Errando; starring Limara Meneses, Eman Xor Oña, Mario Guerra. Spain/UK.

Last year’s AFI Fest was chock-full of stop-motion animation, and I think I went to all of them; this year, there’s only this one animated film, not stop-motion, but I’m still going to make an effort to get to it. I’m a sucker for animation, especially if it promises a different look and theme from most American kid-oriented efforts, and this one does. AFI Film Guide

HaHaHa

dir: Hong Sang-soo; starring Kim Sang-kyung, Yu Jun-sang, Moon So-ri. South Korea.

A filmmaker and a friend meet for drinks and discuss some of their past experiences – as they do in flashback, it becomes clear only to the audience that their memories are of the same place and the same people. This kind of structural playfulness and audience awareness hits a perfect sweet spot with me, and though it’s difficult to parse much from the non-subtitled trailer, the mood looks delicious as well. AFI Film Guide

Pulsar

dir: Alex Stockman; starring Matthia Schoenaerts, Tine Van den Wyngaert. Belgium.

You can never have too many films about internet-age paranoia. Okay, actually you can, but this one looks pretty intriguing, about a couple who communicate long-distance online, but things turn sinister when the guy finds out his wifi is compromised – and by something perhaps more sinister than an ordinary hacker. Advance buzz is already good for this. AFI Film Guide

Clip on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pulsar/148426905168951?v=app_2392950137

The Myth of the American Sleepover

dir: David Robert Mitchell; starring: Claire Sloma, Marlon Morton, Amanda Bauer. USA.

Not sure I could articulate exactly what about this trailer is pulling me so much, but I really want to see this film – perhaps because of that almost ineffable quality it seems to have in capturing the little quiet moments that end up defining young lives even as they search for the big events. AFI Film Guide

Submarino

dir: Thomas Vinterberg; starring Jakob Cedergren, Peter Plaughborg, Morten Rose, Patricia Schumann. Denmark.

I’m never entirely sure about festival films that look as bleak as this one does, being about two brothers who underwent a trauma as children and are now struggling as adults with addiction, less-than-supportive friends, custody trials, and caring for a young son – but there’s something very compelling about the trailer, and though I’ve not seen many Danish films, Vinterberg’s name is still one I recognize and want to explore. AFI Film Guide

Removal

dir: Nick Simon; starring Billy Burke, Mark Kelly, Kelly Brook, Emma Caulfield. USA.

A couple of times through this trailer has me more and more intrigued by this little thriller – is the main guy crazy? Did his employer kill his wife? What’s going on here? I don’t know, but I want to find out. Also, Emma Caulfield is in it, and I haven’t hardly seen her since BtVS. AFI Film Guide

Free Radicals: The History of Experimental Film

dir: Pip Chodorov; featuring Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Hans Richter, Michael Snow, Ken Jacobs. France.

This one had me from the opening shot of the trailer, which is from Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, an avant-garde film I come back to again and again. I don’t watch very much avant-garde film, and I may like the idea of it more than actually watching it, but I’m still fascinated by it in general, and this doc looks like a great introduction/overview of it. AFI Film Guide

trailer here: http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/video-podcast?vid=109

Boy

dir: Taika Waititi; starring James Folleston, Te Aho Eketone-Whitu, Taika Waititi. New Zealand.

A coming-of-age story with a precocious boy named “Boy”, his brother Rocky, and the absentee father who uenxpectedly rolls back into their lives – I’m not always huge on coming-of-age stories, but this looks sweetly funny, plus, Kiwi accents. I’M SHALLOW. SUE ME. AFI Film Guide

Certified Copy

dir: Abbas Kiarostami; starring Juliette Binoche, William Shimell. France/Iran/Italy.

I have yet to see anything by Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami, and I’m not sure I want to start with his first non-Iranian-produced film, but this does look mighty intriguing – talky, but with the conversation focusing on the nature of orginality, a topic that intrigues me on its own, with or without a supporting story about an art scholar and his admirer (played by Juliette Binoche in a performance that won her an award at Cannes). AFI Film Guide

Oki’s Movie

dir: Hong Sang-soo; starring Lee Sun-kyun, Jung Yimi, Moon Sung-keun. South Korea.

The second film in the fest for director Hong Sang-soo (see also Hahaha), and sounds like from the description this also has a lot of play with structure, showing in four sections various occurrences involving a filmmaker, his professor, and the woman they both love. I think scheduling is making me miss this one, but I’ll be sure to check it out later. AFI Film Guide

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

dir: Werner Herzog. USA.

Herzog takes on 3D to take us inside the Chauvet Cage to look at some of the oldest prehistoric paintings in existence. I’m still on the fence about 3D (mostly sliding toward disliking it intensely), but I’m curious to see what filmmakers like Herzog and Scorsese do with it, and a documentary like this may be exactly the right use for it. AFI Film Guide

Some Days are Better Than Others

dir: Matt McCormick; starring Carrie Brownstein, James Mercer. USA.

This could be really good or really crappy – it falls into that category of American indie films that are almost impossible to judge based on a trailer, because the edge that it walks along between profound and pseudo-profound is so fine. I’m intrigued by it starring Carrie Brownstein (of Sleater-Kinney, as well as her own comedy team) and James Mercer (of The Shins), plus I’ve seen some good stuff coming out of the Portland filmmaking scene, so I’m hopeful, but not naively so. AFI Film Guide

The Weather Station

dir: Johnny O’Reilly; starring Alexey Gus’kov, Anton Shagin, Egor Pazenko, Marina Alexandrova. Russia.

Parallel narratives tell of a pair of isolated weather station attendants in frozen Russia and the detectives who come to investigae when they disappear – it’s easy to name-check Hitchcock when talking about a thriller, as the AFI Film Guide does, but I must admit, it’s still a pretty good way to catch my attention. AFI Film Guide

Rabbit Hole

dir: John Cameron Mitchell; starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest. USA.

I’m used to seeing John Cameron Mitchell do completely off-the-wall stuff like Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus, not adaptations of Pulitzer Prize-winning dramas, but such is the case here, and I’m actually pretty excited to see what he does with it, and with this cast. I steadfastly hold that in the right parts, Nicole Kidman is fantastic, and this looks like the right sort of role for her. AFI Film Guide

Film Socialisme

dir: Jean-Luc Godard; starring Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Jean Marc Stethle. Switzerland.

I’m not at all sure I want my first post-1967 Godard film to be this apparently indecipherable film that has utterly split audiences assunder at every festival it’s screened at so far, but I also have an undeniable burning curiousity about it, and it looks like the scheduling is making it all-too-easy for me to get to it. AFI Film Guide

Outrage

dir: Takeshi Kitano; starring Ryo Kase, Jun Kinimura, Tomokazu, Beat Takeshi. Japan.

This trailer is very unconvincing, what with it basically being guys yelling at each other the whole time. But based on Takeshi Kitano’s reputation (I’ve yet to see one of his films) and the description expanding the yelling guys into a full-on yakuza story, I’m looking forward to checking this out. AFI Film Guide

Putty Hill

dir: Matthew Porterfield; starring Sky Ferriera, Zoe Vance, James Selebor Jr. USA.

When a young man overdoses on heroin, his friends and family gather for his funeral, each with a different point of view on who he was – those views begin to form a fragmented picture of the boy. I like this sort of storytelling, and I do like the thoughtful quality of the trailer, but I can’t say I’m wholly convinced by it. AFI Film Guide

Poetry

dir: Lee Chang-dong; starring Yun Jung-hee, Lee David, Kim Hira. South Korea.

I ranked this a little higher initially on just seeing the trailer, but now that the description is out, I might knock it down a little. This one, about a grandmother turning to poetry in the aftermath of a horrific scandal involving her grandson, looks very aptly poetic, but doesn’t sound quite as interesting as some of the other Korean films in play this year, and I don’t want to out-Korean myself. AFI Film Guide

Made in Dagenham

dir: Nigel Cole; starring: Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Rosamund Pike. UK.

Stories about labor disputes aren’t really my thing (unless it’s The Pajama Game and I’m expecting Bob Fosse to break out into “Steam Heat” any second), but the classy feminist angle here and the very solid cast have me intrigued – I’ve also read some positive advance reviews. AFI Film Guide

Abel

dir: Diego Luna; starring: Christopher Ruíz-Esparza, José Marí Yazpik, Karina Gidi. Mexico.

Acclaimed Mexican actor Diego Luna’s first time behind the camera, and the story looks fairly interesting, about an eccentric nine-year-old boy who makes himself the de facto patriarch of his family in the absence of his father. I’d actually be more interested in it, though, if it WEREN’T a gala screening, for some obviously contrarian reason. AFI Film Guide

Adrienn Pál

dir: Agnes Kocsis; starring Izabella Hegyi, Eva Gabor, Akos Horvath. Hungary/Austrlia/France/Netherlands.

The description evokes long-take master Bela Tarr, and judging from the trailer (and the running time), I can see that – this looks like quite the meditative experience, following a terminal ward nurse through her daily life and then on a journey as she seeks a friend she hasn’t seen in ages. The trailer also suggests that not everything is as it seems, which intrigues me, but I have to be in just the right mood to watch Tarr-like stuff. AFI Film Guide

Two Gates of Sleep

dir: Alistair Banks Griffin; starring Brady Corbet, David Call, Karen Young. USA.

I’m intrigued by the gorgeous cinematography and deliberate pacing of the trailer, but the description (brothers in the rural South prepare for their mother’s death and then make an arduous trek for her burial) doesn’t really sound at all like my thing. There are comparisons to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, which I’ve never successfully read, either. AFI Film Guide

The Housemaid

dir: Im Sang-soo; starring Jeon Do-youn, Lee Jung-jae, Seo Woo. South Korea.

A remake of a famed 1960 Korean film (playing back to back with this one at the festival), with an affair between a rich man and his housemaid spiraling into an erotic thriller of ever-growing cruelty. Sounds like a good time, right? I’d see it (cinematography looks beautiful), but I’m not going out of my way for it. AFI Film Guide

Barney’s Version

dir: Richard J. Lewis; starring: Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver. Canada/Italy.

Paul Giamatti is always worth watching. Always. I’m not rushing right out at this festival to see this one, about a man just trying to find the right woman, instead marrying wrong ones (apparently) three times. With Rosamund Pike and Minnie Driver as two of the exes and Dustin Hoffman as Giamatti’s father, plus a script that sounds pretty witty, I’m definitely going to check it out on DVD, though. AFI Film Guide

Shit Year

dir: Cam Archer; starring Ellen Barkin, Luke Grimes, Bob Einstein. USA.

Despite the lack of trailer for this one, and the sense from a few reviews I’ve read that this is a bit more on the pretentious side than I’d like, I’m still intrigued by the concept and the experimental style. AFI Film Guide

trailer not on YouTube – info here http://www.the-match-factory.com/films/items/shit-year.html

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

dir: Apichatpong Weerasethakul; starring Natthakam Aphaiwonk, Sakda Kaewbuadee, Geerasak Kulhong. Thailand.

I’ve seen the trailer for this a few times, and I’ve read a few descriptions of it, but I still don’t really have idea what to expect from it – a dying man, spirits of dead wives and children, wooly Yetis, endless forests, Boonmee’s soul? I don’t know – but it did win the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, and even if none of those other things intrigued me, I’m interested because of that.

The Princess of Montpensier

dir: Bertrand Tavernier; starring Mélanie Thierry, Lambet Wilson, Grégoire Leprince. France.

Sometime along the way I’ve lost my taste for period films, which is kind of a shame. This sounds like it could be good, with political intrigue paralleling the forbidden love story, but the period setting added to a 139 minute running time made me gravitate toward other films on the schedule. AFI Film Guide

Norwegian Ninja

dir: Thomas Cappelen Malling; starring Mads Ousdal, Jon Oigarden, Trond-Viggo Torgersen. Norway.

This falls into the “what the hell did I just see” category. I totally can’t tell from that trailer whether this is going to be an awesome piece of cult filmmaking or an utter train wreck of horrible badness. It could so easily go either way. AFI Film Guide

Carancho

dir: Pablo Trapero; starring Ricardo Darin, Martina Gusman, Carlos Weber. Argentina/Chile/France.

Anything described as a “noir thriller” has my attention, and I’d probably watch and enjoy this film, but it doesn’t seem to have too much to set it apart from any other third-world-set thriller that takes corruption and ethical dilemmas as its theme. AFI Film Guide

His & Hers

dir: Ken Wardrop. Ireland.

The idea of focusing a documentary solely on women (women drawn almost solely from a single county in Ireland) talking about the men in their life is kind of fascinating in both its rigid exclusivity and possibility for widely ranging experience. I’m not a documentary fan, and I feel like this one could easily turn into little more than a sentimentalist feel-good film, but I might check it out on DVD later. AFI Film Guide

I Will Follow

dir: Ava DuVernay; starring Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Omari Hardwick, Tracie Thoms, Blaire Underwood. USA.

This tale of loss and grieving looks to have a great deal of humanity and tenderness in it, judging by the trailer, and it was on my long “yeah, I’d watch that” list, but not high enough to win the scheduling wars. AFI Film Guide

The Housemaid (1960)

dir: Kim Ki-Young; starring Lee Eun-sim, Joo Jeung-nyeo, Kim Jin-kyn. Souh Korea.

A “classic of Korean noir drama” this is, the basis for the remake that is also playing at the festival. It’s nice that they’re showing both films back to back (they did that at TIFF also). Neither one is high on my list to see here, but I’d like to see both eventually. AFI Film Guide

Aardvark

dir: Kitao Sakurai; starring Larry L. Lewis Jr, Darren Branch, Jessica Cole. USA/Argentina.

The blurbs for this so far have made a big deal about the fact that a man blind from birth is playing a man blind from birth. That’s cool, but using that to try to sell the film isn’t working for me – beyond that gimmick, it looks fairly routine. AFI Film Guide

Amigo

dir: John Sayles; starring Chris Cooper, Garret Dillahunt, Ronnie Lazaro. USA.

Sayles draws thematic parallels between the Philippine-American war of early 1900s to our current situation in the Middle East, exploring the difficulties of living under and commanding an occupying force. AFI Film Guide

Nothing’s All Bad

dir: Mikkel Munch-Fals; starring Bodil Jorgensen, Henrik Prip, Mille Hoffmeyer Lehfeldt. Denmark.

Four parallel stories of lonely people, each with a different reason for despairing of finding love – that sounds like an upper of a time, doesn’t it? No, more seriously, this film is probably well worth watching, but I’m probably not going to be into it this festival. AFI Film Guide

trailer here http://storytellertrailers.blogspot.com/2010/08/smukke-mennesker-nothings-all-bad.html (wait through the guy talking, then the actual full trailer starts)

The Human Resources Manager

dir: Eran Riklis; starring Mark Ivanir, Guri Alfi, Noah Silver, Rozina Cambos. Israel/Romania/France/Germany.

When a Romania worker is killed in a bombing at the Jerusalem bakery where she works, the bakery’s Human Resources Manager embarks on a journey to make things right with her family in Romania. This looks like one of those little films that are too self-consciously heartwarming for their own good. AFI Film Guide

A Screaming Man

dir: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun; starring Youssouf Djaoro, Diouc Koma, Emil Abossolo. Belgium/Chad/France.

The bits of this trailer that focus on Chad’s civil war interest me; the bits that focus on the aging pool attendant and his relationship with his son less so. The whole doesn’t intrigue me enough to seek it out. AFI Film Guide

Hamill

dir: Oren Kaplan; starring Russell Harvard, Raymond J. Barry, Shoshannah Stern. USA.

As overcoming-adversity sports stories go, this one about a deaf boy who became a UFC fighter (a true story) looks like a pretty decent one. But it’s still an overcoming-adversit sports story, which is pretty much my all-time least favorite genre.AFI Film Guide

Win/Win

dir: Jaap van Heusden; starring Oscar Van Rompay, Halina Reijn, Leon Voorberg. Netherlands.

This story about a geek whose prowess with numbers and patterns has him sitting pretty with insider trading seems like it could be entertaining enough, but I’m not drawn in enough by the premise or the style to do much about it. AFI Film Guide

The Four Times

dir: Michelangelo Frammartino; starring Giuseppe Fuda, Bruno Timpano. Italy/Germany/Switzerland.

One of my cowriters at RowThree wrote this up from TIFF, or I never would’ve heard of it before – sounds like it’s an almost narrativeless meditation on an Italian village, taking its time just showing the rhythms of life there. I’m torn between “that sounds unique, let’s do it!” and “that sounds kinda boring, let’s not,” but I think scheduling dictates not. AFI Film Guide

trailer not on YouTube

Pink Saris

dir: Kim Longinotto; featuring Renu Devi, Niranjan Pal, Sampat Pal Devi. UK.

Longinotto is known for a series of documentaries highlighting women’s fight for justice around the world, and now she heads to India, following a group of female activists. This is a great cause, I’m glad she’s making films to draw attention to it, but it’s just not personally my thing with so many great narrative films here. AFI Film Guide

I Saw the Devil

dir: Kim Jee-woon; starring Lee Byung-hun, Choi Min-sik, Oh San-ha. South Korea.

I quite liked Kim Jee-woon’s previous film The Good, the Bad, the Weird, and there are probably parts of this I would like, but some reviews I’ve seen report that this one goes a little far with its sadistic bloodlust, and it sounds like it might be a bit much for me. AFI Film Guide

The Company Men

dir: John Wells; starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Maria Bello, Kevin Costner. USA.

And this is where I ghettoize the big name films that I don’t have much interest in seeing at all, and REALLY have no interest in seeing at a film festival. Seriously, this is going to be out in theatres in a hot minute, why would I see it here? Though I will say, I’m not a fan of Ben Affleck in front of the camera, but he seems to be doing well here. AFI Film Guide

Morgen

dir: Marian Crisan; starring Hathazi Andras, Yalcin Yilmaz, Elvira Rimbu. Romania/Hungary/France.

A Romanian man is faced with a difficulty when he comes across an illegal, needy Turkish man – humanity conflicts with the law that would indict him for helping an illegal immigrant. This is obviously a story that applies to borders beyond Romania/Turkey/Hungary, but I’m rarely in the mood for such obvious social dramas. AFI Film Guide

Love & Other Drugs

dir: Edward Zwick; starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Oliver Platt, Judy Greer. USA.

Okay, this might be a slight step above your average dumped-in-the-multiplex romantic comedy, but I’m still not falling over myself to see it. AFI Film Guide

Barbershop Punk

dir: Georgia Sugimura Archer, Kristin Armfield; featuring Henry Rollins, Ian MacKaye, Janeane Garofalo. USA.

A documentary on net neutrality and freedom of speech in the information age is certainly timely, and I won’t deny an interest in many of the topics raised here. Am I rushing right out to see it though? No, probably not. I blame documentary-bias. AFI Film Guide

The King’s Speech

dir: Tom Hooper; starring Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter, Geoffrey Rush. Australia/UK.

This is the most blatant piece of Oscar-bait I’ve seen in a while. I don’t actually care that much if it turns out to be a good movie – I’m too busy being made physically ill by the groveling to the Academy. AFI Film Guide

Precious Life

dir: Shlomi Eldar. Israel.

Here again, another documentary about something obviously important – the life of a child in Gaza, whose medical condition requires Israeli and Palestinian doctors to put aside differences to save him. It’s important, I’m glad there’s a film about it, but I’m not particularly anxious to see it. Geez, I feel like such a jerk expressing disinterest in documentaries like this. AFI Film Guide

Karamay

dir: Xu Xin. China.

I feel a little more justified in expressing disinterest in watching nearly six hours worth of this documentary, which chronicles the aftermath of a theatre fire that claimed the lives of 300 people, many of them children who were obediently waiting for government officials to get out safely first – certainly there’s a valid critique here to be made, but for six hours? Really? AFI Film Guide

Casino Jack

dir: George Hickenlooper; starring Kevin Spacey, Barry Pepper, Kelly Preston, Jon Lovitz. Canada.

A narrative film based on the true story of super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff; just doesn’t strike any interest in me at all. AFI Film Guide

Bedevilled

dir: Jang Cheol-soo; starring Seo Young-hee, Ji Sung-won. South Korea.

I’m coming around more and more to liking horror and gore flicks, but I’m not all the way there, and this revenge tale of a woman who turns savage in retaliation to her own mistreatment sounds, from all reports, a bit too extreme for me. AFI Film Guide

Charlie Chaplin in One A.M.

By Jandy

On October 21, 2010

In Film

The Cinefamily rep cinema has been doing a Chaplin series for the past couple of months (all the features and a bunch of silent shorts), and they capped it off last night with Modern Times – but first they played probably my all-time favorite Chaplin short, One A.M. Chaplin is closely associated with the Little Tramp character he played in pretty much all of his features from The Kid through The Great Dictator, but he also had another character in his shorts – a more dapper man-about-town wearing a suit that actually fit. That’s who he plays in One A.M., which is a one-character piece of Charlie, very drunk from a night out, trying to get into up to bed. It’s a fantastic exploration of how much physical comedy you can get out of essentially one person and two rooms. And it’s a lot.

Split up into two parts because of YouTube’s length limitations.

Review: Never Let Me Go

By Jandy

On October 15, 2010

In Film

[Rating:4.5/5]

Science fiction in the vein of Never Let Me Go is a rare thing – not showy or obvious, no aliens or space travel, no visible scientific apparatus, nothing really even explicitly stated. Yet the characters’ lives are utterly defined and guided by science fiction elements, and the kind of ethical questions implicitly explored are those of classic science fiction going back to Asimov and Wells, here told with a poignant humanism and thoughtfulness rarely found on the screen today. The way understanding of the characters’ situation gradually dawns as the story unfolds is part of the pleasure of it, so I’m going to try not to spoil it as much as possible. (Even though it’s been long enough now since release that if you’ve remained unspoiled, you’re kind of amazing and you should definitely go into this film knowing as little as possible – not because it depends on not knowing what’s going on, but because it just gives it that much more oomph and poignancy if you learn gradually along with the film.)

Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy grow up together at what seems to be an upscale boarding school in rural England, going through the joys and squabbles that any children do, but there are signs that things may not all be as they seem. We learn more about who these children are and what the school is as the story unfolds, but we remain firmly focused on their relationship with each other, especially as Ruth and Tommy begin dating, leaving Kathy a patient but longing third wheel. This is a story primarily concerned with relationships, but relationships that are predicated on and intensified by these individuals’ particular status in society.

The film succeeds on nearly every level and doesn’t fall victim to the stifling over-faithfulness to it source material that I feared it might – Kasuo Ishiguro’s novel is a difficult one to adapt, and there is a lot of streamlining here, especially in straightening out Ishiguro’s meandering timeline and eliding a lot of the portions of the story not essential to the central relationship among the three children. This means there is much less time spent on Ruth as a child, which is perhaps the film’s one weak point. Keira Knightley does a fine job as Ruth, capturing her winning vivacity, occasional vindictiveness, and ultimate frailty well, but the character doesn’t seem as fully fleshed out as she is in the book. Carey Mulligan adds another great performance onto her CV, portraying the mousy but stronger-than-she-seems Kathy with great nuance and sympathy. And upcoming Spider-Man Andrew Garfield holds his own against the two women as the troubled Tommy. Sure, there’s stuff in the book that was great and is left out here, but the choices made are solid and make for a strong and coherent film.

Much like the novel, the film takes a matter-of-fact yet thought-provoking perspective on the central underlying fact that governs the character’s lives – never didactic nor preachy, but encouraging you to construct the rest of society (which exists as a sort of negative space against which our characters appear in sharp relief) and the ethical concerns that the film brings up but doesn’t answer. I love this way of approaching difficult questions, and I actually really appreciated Kathy H’s final few lines of dialogue, heartbreaking in their humanist acceptance of things which are both unacceptable and, within the context of the story, inevitable. The balance in the film, as in the book, is tipped well toward people rather than ideas, but that’s as it should be for this story, and it’s through the people that the ideas come into focus. It may be a little safe and comfortable for people who like their science fiction edgy and provocative, but that’s not what Never Let Me Go is, and what it does it does superbly.

Oh, and also – kudos to the casting director on finding a DEAD RINGER for Carey Mulligan to play young Kathy. And also, also, to Rachel Portman for her pitch-perfect score.