Kiss The Bride

There's a tired old adage, "Why do gays want to marry? Haven't they seen how miserable married people are?" The same question should have been asked of a director who aspires to make a "gay movie" which contains all the worst elements of every low quality romantic comedy of the past thirty years.

Kiss The Bride is a dismal train-wreck of a movie. Inane writing and cringe-worthy jokes are only made worse by poor acting. Sadly there are a couple decent jokes buried in the midst, but they are more than overshadowed by the in your face, "We're gay, hey, look at us, see how gay we are! We're being gay!" attitude conveyed by so many characters. Any character who plays one facet to such extremes is next to intolerable, and to have literally dozens of them is mind-numbing.

The Art of Negative Thinking

I love Nordic humor. From my admittedly limited experience I conclude that they are, to a man, masters of awkward, understated comedy, and Negative Thinking is a fine example.

The basic premise is that a bitter and crippled man unwillingly joins a support group for the disabled. Obviously this is a ridiculously broad premise, and the joy is in the details. The subtle interactions between the members of the group at the beginning are priceless, even down to the odd smile or glance.

The filming is simple and perfect. The soundtrack is fun, and entirely internal to the film (no music that is not also heard by the characters). The writing is clever and heartfelt. I really want to give away some high points, but I shouldn't because the shock value is part of the humor. If you like The Office or Arrested Development, this movie is for you.

Ask Not

I have a couple criteria for good documentaries. The biggest one is, show, don't tell. We don't need some narrator reciting facts at us, no matter how relevant the imagery you put under it. Let us see the opinion of the people involved, not your pet statistics.

Ask Not does this maybe 3/4ths of the time. They certainly found an interesting subject in the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy of the US military, which is currently discharging and turning away thousands of homosexual soldiers a year while at the same time failing to meet enlistment quotas. And they found two activist groups whose activities provide a decent narrative for the documentary.

Unfortunately, they also give in to the temptation to splash title cards up on the screen with "startling statistics" about homosexuals in the military, complete with dramatically blurred out flags waving in the background. They couldn't find someone in all their interviews who mentioned those facts?

In addition, it seemed that a bit too much time was spent on the activists, and not enough on the people who oppose the movement. I wouldn't care as much, except they took the time to show them saying the same thing verbatim a number of times, which seems like it could have been better used to elaborate on the mindset of the people they're up against.

There are several sit-ins at military recruitment centers that are well worth seeing, though. This is definitely a valuable documentary, despite any shortcomings in the presentation.

Jar City

Again I strike out on the late show, although not quite as badly as last time. Jar City is a decent attempt at a murder mystery, and while it gets a lot of things right, a few pieces just fall short.

The murder is suitably gruesome, and the investigation produces plenty of plot twists. The lead is likable in a gruff way. The story does an interesting job merging our new-found phobia of genetic databases with the familiar detective story. But some spark is missing, and I wasn't particularly excited to find out who did it. Possibly worth seeing once, definitely not worth seeing again.

Michou d'Auber

Another confession: I have never seen a movie starring Gerard Depardieu until this one. And now I want to go see what I've been missing.

Michou is a Muslim boy of Algerian descent who is left in the French foster care system when his father can no longer support their family. He's taken in by a woman from a small town where most of the residents are extremely prejudiced, including his ex-army foster father (the movie is set during the presidency of Charles Du Gaulle and the Algerian war for independence). The woman changes the boy's name, dyes his hair blonde, and hijinks ensue.

A story that might be hackneyed is kept fresh by clever writing and a terrific cast. And plenty of drunkenness, fistfights, and infidelity offset the touching family moments, although not enough to overwhelm the sweetness of the film. Overall, an understated French comedy that is well worth seeing.

Blood Brothers

I have to be honest: I fell asleep during this filming. Partly because I was worn out from a full weekend of SIFF, and partly because, well, it's just not that great.

Blood Brothers is trying to be a classic gangster film retold in an asian setting. Men wear vests, suits, and fedoras, and smoke cigars. Women wear slinky dresses and sing jazz in smoky lounges while their mafia don boyfriends look on. Young kids from the country move to the big city and get caught up in a world of crime. Oh, and lots and lots of people get shot.

Maybe I just don't get asian facial expressions. I'm sure there's some cultural disconnect there. But none of the acting struck me as particularly believable. The sets were pretty, and the overall feel had some good character, but there were a lot of little details missing -- the smoky lounges weren't smoky, the don's girlfriend wasn't sophisticated enough, and everything felt a bit plastic. Just not my thing.

They didn't completely fail at what they were trying for, but they really didn't get all that close either.

Mongol

Most people wouldn't think of the story of Genghis Khan, Temudgin, leader of the Mongol Hordes as a love story, but director Sergei Bodrov pulls it off quite nicely.

For starters, the film focuses almost entirely on his life before becoming a warlord, beginning when Temudgin is only 8 years old. From there it dives in to his nearly constant persecution, and builds a very convincing case for a person driven to find revenge.

Of course there's more than just drama; as a war epic Mongol does quite well, with violent and bloody battle scenes of several sizes, but the character of the hero is present throughout. And by the end, the viewer has what feels like a reasonable impression of life on the steppes around the turn of the millennium.

What detracted from my enjoyment just a little was a number of aspects that seemed too fabricated. The film is shot in Mongolia, the dialog is in Mongol, and the settings and costumes seem beautiful but authentic. However, there are several implications of divine intervention that feel somewhat out of place, and at certain points it strains credulity to think that a Mongol warlord was so extremely enlightened towards women at a time when the larger society treated them as possessions. And indeed the director mentioned that many of the details were filled in from his own imagination.

That's not to say I was disappointed by any means, as the story was very enjoyable overall. I think it just means it has to be taken as a retelling of the myth of Genghis Khan, rather than the fact.

Gonzo

I thought I knew a fair bit about Hunter S. Thompson. I've read a fair number of things both by him and about him. I've heard the stories, like how he ran for mayor of Aspen in the late '60s on a platform consisting of legalizing marijuana and renaming the town "Fat City". But this documentary / biography had loads of fascinating stuff that I'd never seen.

For one thing, Thompson apparently kept a ton of audio tapes and archival footage, and they're used heavily throughout this piece. It's absolutely fantastic to see him sitting in city hall wearing cargo shorts and debating his opponent in the electoral race, or hear the late-night phone messages he'd leave for friends. And for the bits that don't have direct recorded pieces, readings of Thompson's own writing by long-time friend Johnny Depp work nearly as well.

The film is mainly about Thompson's early work, from Hell's Angels through Fear And Loathing on The Campaign Trail. The political and cultural aspects are heavily emphasized, and the work offers a tangible feeling of the society at the time which anyone should appreciate, HST fan or no.

Terra

CG has come a long way. Terra was produced in a couple years with a budget 1/10th that of the usual Pixar or Dreamworks presentation, but it looks just as beautiful. That, along with a star-filled vocal cast and a workable sci-fi story make this a fun little picture.

The alien planet is extremely beautiful, with statuesque trees piercing a planet-wide fog, and weird sky-whales and other critters darting about. The aliens themselves are fantastic, and you can easily see that a lot of effort went into their movements and facial expressions. The humans are unfortunately a bit stilted and rubbery, but their environment makes up for it.

It's extremely difficult to do a kids sci-fi movie that isn't just a rehash of something out of the 60s. There's less space for character development, and the more convoluted the plot, the less likely you'll be able to convince people that kids will sit through it. Terra has skirted this problem nicely by combining two relatively simple premises into a story that really works. It's not Shakespeare, but it's entertaining.

I mentioned the cast, and the voice acting is certainly well done. Amanda Peet and Luke Wilson fit well in their roles, and the bit parts are filled with voices that at least don't stand out against the leads. The highlight has to be David Cross as a snarky robotic helper. Every sci-fi movie should be so lucky.

Vexille

Dystopian technophobe futuristic sci-fi with Japan cast as the villain is, well, pretty unusual to find in anime. Vexille follows a group of elite commandos in the US army and their mission to infiltrate Japan, which has been out of contact for ten years. It seems someone's been building totally life-like androids, and it's our job to find out who.

Great CG and effects make this extremely easy on the eyes. Japanese voices playing supposedly American characters are a little less impressive. Bad, really bad, horrible dialog is a shame, since much of the rest of the film is pretty neat. The characters are pretty light; this is a plot movie, and saying any more would ruin the surprise.

Stands up well against most other one-off anime films. Decent if you're into sci-fi, even if you're not an anime fan. That's about it, though. If cheesy lines and bad science piss you off, you might want to skip this one, because they're peppered throughout.

The Fall

This is a tough one to write. I've got no idea where to begin. The 20s period piece? The touching friendship? The swashbuckling fairy tale? The mesmerizing and weird imagery? Screw it.

This movie is like nothing I've seen before. I can identify parts: the colors are straight out of Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited; the swashbuckling is perhaps an element of Pirates of the Caribbean mixed with The Princess Bride, and possibly a bit of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Charles Darwin is one of the swashbucklers). The period drama and growing friendship between a suicidal actor and an upbeat little girl is relatively standard, although very well done. I can't find a source for the imagery except the apparently deeply disturbed mind of Tarsem Singh (the guy who did The Cell a while back).

So let's talk imagery. Fantastic, sweeping desolate landscapes, shot in beautifuly artistic compositions. Strange buildings and objects, lots of simple geometric shapes, and vibrant, conflicting colors. The scenery is so striking it nearly overwhelmes the action happening in front of it, and certainly would if the heroes weren't decked out in nearly as bizarre a fashion.

There was much more comedy in the fantasy portion than I expected, but it worked well. Don't expect this to be as serious as The Cell, because it's really not. It's serious when it needs to be, but not much more than that, and that's okay. The emotional scenes are very well done, and in great contrast to the fantasy.

I need to see this movie again, it's as simple as that. It's an amazing mix of good drama and insanely creative fantasy. It'll be criminal if this doesn't get a wide release.

Sita Sings The Blues

Part auto-biographical "fuck you" to an ex-boyfriend, part retelling of the Indian epic Ramayana, part societal commentary, and part jazz musical, this movie was lots of fun.

Nina is an illustrator who's living with her boyfriend when he gets a contract and moves to India temporarily. Sita is the wife of Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu, who is captured by another man and then scorned once she's rescued. Annette Hanshaw was a jazz singer who recorded a number of very nice songs in the 1920s, a number of which work admirably as a loose reinterpretation of Sita's story. And then there's three Indian paintings who sit around making fun of the whole thing.

The story proceeds jumping back and forth between these parts, with completely different but equally entertaining animation styles for each. The jazz bits are particularly hilarious as the animation adds a new slant to some old lyrics, but all the sections work well together.

I'm not sure what else to say, really. The humor was adult-themed, so this isn't for kids. It's definitely not serious viewing, but it's a lot of fun. I would gladly see it again, given a chance.

Epitaph

Following on from such a gripping thriller as TransSiberian, I'm not sure what could have competed in the horror genre. Epitaph wasn't it, but it wasn't bad.

A mildly confusing prologue leads in to three intermingling ghost stories set in a Korean (I think) hospital around WWII. Beautiful period sets and outfits are enjoyable, and the scenes are pretty enough. The acting is quite decent, although maybe nothing special. The plot itself, though, is overly confusing and a bit cliche.

Maybe I was tired, but it took too long to make the context switch between the first and second ghost, which pulled me out of the narrative. And of the three ghosts, only the second was really scary. The others went for cheap shocks and triple-bluff surprises, and were not scary at all. Maybe that's the point, since classic ghost stories are not necessarily supposed to be terrifying, but the stories aren't quite strong enough to carry it without that strong emotion to draw you in.

Worth seeing if you're a fan of the Japanese Horror genre, or maybe horror in general, but otherwise you won't be missing much.

TransSiberian

When you think of Woody Harrelson, your first thought is probably not one of the most hair-raising thrillers ever made. And to be fair, while he does lead the bill, the real star is the fantastic Emily Mortimer (although Woody is great in his own right). Padded out with Sir Ben Kingsly and a great supporting cast, this movie will, frankly, mess you up.

Following a brief prelude filmed in Russian, we get a proper introduction to our stars: a couple of Christian missionaries traveling home on the Trans-Siberian Express after some months work in China. Woody as the husband is a goofy but sweet train buff, and Emily is his used-to-be-a-bad-girl spouse. A cute couple on a vacation in Siberia. Nothing could go wrong.

Muted colors and bleak landscapes work wonderfully here, as the mounting tension of seeing what could go wrong next stands out all the more. Characters are tangible and extremely well acted, and the plot is a masterpiece in escalating psychological warfare. The plot twists are by turns surprising and inevitable in all the right places to keep that wonderful feeling of dread growing in the audience at a steady pace.

Better than Fargo, which is a pretty obvious comparison (Siberia actually seems more heavily populated than North Dakota, although probably colder). Absolutely worth watching multiple times.

Eat, For This Is My Body

I haven't seen a lot of art school output, but from this film I feel reasonably certain that some teachers at the New York Film Institute like slow walking nudes and phrasal repetition just a bit too much.

Eat is surrealist to the extreme, featuring little or no coherence between scenes, and no meaningful dialog for the bulk of the movie. Some cinematography was certainly striking and beautiful, and the acting was quite good, what there was of it. Personally I'm going to blame the writer/director for indulging a bit too much in basic art film gotchas, but whatever the reason this movie dragged.

Now, while I really disliked the pacing and overuse of slow walking, it's obvious that the film contains nearly critical levels of symbolism, and did a decent job of getting people to try to think, provided they could stay awake to see the imagery. Sadly, it may have overshot its goal there; you can only get so abstract before watchers stop thinking about the target of your symbolism and start thinking about the symbolism itself.

Here's what I gleaned from the movie (don't read on if you want to be surprised, but I can't imagine this movie being spoiled by anything you might hear about it): the writer thinks the natives of Haiti are spoiling the island and using up its bounty without giving anything back or protecting renewable resources. He also thinks that white, foreign nations are disingenuous and self-serving in their offers of aide, and that Haitian culture lusts after the first world's lifestyle. Call me a philistine, but I think those points could have been made in less time, and with less self-indulgence, and without any of the many beautiful aspects of this film.

Ballast

There are times when I just don't agree with critics and the people who give awards, and this was one of those times. Ballast is a stark look at the effects of a suicide in a small southern town on the survivors: the man's identical twin brother, his ex wife, and their son.

Some scenes had a lot of power, particularly those focusing on the son. And the characters are certainly solid and relatively complex. The landscape is so bleak that it gives an extremely depressing vibe, which is certainly okay as this is not supposed to be a happy movie in any way.

Other scenes, though, seem to fall a bit flat. Details of putting lives back together are well written and shot, but they don't move the plot along as well as the film needed. A major plot point was left unresolved, which is fine in some cases, but not when it's pushed so heavily in the first half, and not when that resolution could have been the strongest scene in the second half.

In the end it may come back to my personal dislike of straight drama. Yes, suffering and redemption is a core story to the human condition, but you can only see it so many times before you want it at least flavored with something new. And I didn't find anything new here.

Mermaid

Moving on from kids movies, Mermaid is more of an adult fairy tale. A girl is born in a run down coastal town in Russia, and may or may not have magical powers. Which doesn't really matter, because the story is about her growing up, and finding herself.

Alisa starts out as an alien, discouraged from everything she loves, and unhappy with her home and family. The journey to find her peace is quirky and eccentric, as in nearly every coming of age movie, but the little touches here and there are well worth seeing. Her silent spell from ages eight to eighteen is well played, her legless drinking buddy is both original and well acted, and her love interest is suitably awkward and unrequited. Her series of odd jobs wandering the streets of Moscow dressed as a cellular phone or a giant mug of beer are clever and well used.

The cinematography is extremely bleak and depressing (on purpose), and the focus is on realism more than picturesque scenes. It works in getting across the feel of her life, and life in Russia in general, but lacking that richness in color may have hurt the film a bit as an hour and a half of bleakness is certainly depressing.

There are many charming moments, and the conclusion is satisfying and suitably Russian. Looking back I enjoyed this a lot, but for some reason I'm not in a hurry to see it again. Definitely worth seeing if you liked Amelie or Donnie Darko, although it doesn't have a ton in common with either.

Nocturna

A lot of kids movies suffer from "American child" syndrome. That is, people are so hesitant about scaring kids that everything gets reduced to the safest, blandest, most cliched form. And of course that's boring, because you can only watch the movie about the "scary"-looking-but-actually-soft-and-cuddly-monster-with-a-heart-of-gold so many times before you want to go punch Mr. Snuffleupagus in the face. And I maintain that kids can take a lot more than you think, and probably end up as more interesting adults for it.

That's why I like things like Miyazake's Spirited Away, or The Rats of NIHM. They don't pull their punches. Scary things really look scary, and people (or rats, or whatever) can actually die. They have dramatic camera work, and new and interesting ideas that actually stick with you instead of blending into the standard "cute and furry" section of the cultural subconscious.

Enough rambling -- Nocturna is definitely one of those rare kids movies that comes up with something really special. Our hero is an awkward looking kid in an orphanage, who's terrified of the dark, and sneaks his bed over to the window every night to sleep in the light of his own star, Adhara. When a series of accidents leaves him unable to open the window one night, he makes his way up to the roof, and stumbles upon the Cat Shepherd, a huge, ungainly creature whose job it is to herd cats and get them to put children to sleep each night. And then the stars begin to disappear.

I don't know how to describe much more without giving away the plot, but I hope the character of the Shepherd is enough to pique your interest. I can't think of anything quite so creative, even in wildly creative works like Spirited Away. The animation is very good, combining exaggerated children with creatures that have no identifiable origin in any cultural tradition. No walking stuffed animals here, nor Japanese folk legends come to life, but interesting and approachable in their own twisted way.

The plot may be a bit simplistic for some, as this movie seems to be intended for quite young children. There's the requisite, "we're a team now," speech from the Cat Shepherd, and the ending is no surprise (not that it needs to be in a children's story). But if you can overlook a few minutes of stock emotion, the concept and visuals make this well worth seeing.

Mother of Tears

So it's the end of the first day, and I have something to confess... I love trashy B-reel horror films. Low budget, cheesy lines, bad acting, and buckets of blood. It's a guilty pleasure. Mother of Tears is apparently the third in a trilogy that I've heard of but never seen, beginning with Suspirio, and it does deliver all those elements in, well, buckets.

There's the prerequisite occult connection to the distant past, in the form of an urn dug up just outside church grounds in a small town in Italy and sent to Rome. There's the plucky heroine who narrowly escapes the gruesome murder of her co-worker by weird creatures who look suspiciously like the Plaque Gang from that old toothpaste commercial. There's chases, blood, nudity, more blood, bad dialog and suspiciously helpful coincidences, nudity, and more blood. But for some reason, it all fell a little flat for me.

I think it's that this type of thing needs a pretty solid narrative to structure the cheesy effects and bad dialog. As soon as the narrative becomes fractured enough that I start losing track of what's going on between scenes, I start to get bored. And while I don't need everything explained outright, I need weird events to at least fit into a framework of events or symbolism that doesn't take a film degree to come up with. That, and I really dislike it when parts are played by people who are very obviously Actors(tm), and there were a number of them here. Not the worst thing I've seen, but there were too many places where they were trying too hard to really get behind this one.

Opium: Diary of a Madwoman

An angelic madwoman in a German psych ward at the turn of the century becomes the obsession of a doctor, writer, and morphine addict who's lost his muse. Told in bursts of frenetic rage and beautiful, chilling scenes of clinical detachment, I found this movie haunting and wonderful. I'm still thinking about it days later, which is really saying something since I've seen something like eight other films since then.

The heroine has a wonderful range, oscillating between a fragile and very emotional calm and demon-possessed fits. The doctor is fantastically deadpan and detached at all the right times, and the writing and energy between the two is perfect. The cinematography is especially beautiful, with lush period sets and chilling surreal tableaux of clinical experimentation in which women are treated as inanimate test subjects while crowds of curious white-coated doctors peer on emotionless. The alienation of the subjects is palpable. The score alternates between well-used classical and a couple of minimalist electronic themes that work very well.

I've heard some people dismiss the film as, "half pornography." I hate those people. Nudity does not automatically imply pornography, and in this case I'm convinced that it was absolutely necessary to show the complete detachment and disinterest of the medical staff from the subjects as human beings. And much of the subject of the film is the relationship between sex and sin, sex and love, sex and good or evil.

One of the better movies I've seen in a while, all told. I keep replaying the story and themes in my head. I'm still not sure of the characters' true nature, but I enjoy the ambiguity, and I love the possibilities they left open. Definitely something I will see again.

PVC-1

A woman in a rural Mexican home gets a bomb locked to her neck, along with a demand of several million pesos to remove it. Sounds like an upper, I know. Perfect for the first film of SIFF 08.

I came into this not knowing quite what to expect, so I wasn't prepared for the energy it delivered. The film is done in one sustained shot; nothing new, since Hitchcock did it (well, faked it anyway) in Rope. And doing a film in real-time is nothing new either. But none of those capture the raw energy that really makes PVC-1 work. The down spots are longer than you'd expect, but it doesn't get boring because you're dreading the next development the whole time.

The acting is passable, but a bit overdone in several places. Bit parts are filled by actors desperately trying to pass in roles they're simply not suited for. And the dialogue is pretty stilted, even in the original language. Much wailing "dios mio" and wringing of hands. But these are spaced out between enough wordless action and raw energy that it doesn't distract too much.

I enjoyed the camerawork a lot. Very close and immediate, which added to the energy and the suspense. Surprisingly steady, too, so people who loathe handcams shouldn't be bothered too much.

Overall this was definitely worth seeing, and maybe worth seeing twice. The raw documentary feel gives a great energy, and the overall direction and pacing make up for any shortcomings in the script and acting.

On Movies

I like 'em.

I'm not trained in analysis, I don't usually spend a lot of time looking for hidden meanings, and I thought the instructor in the film class I took to pad my fine arts requirement was, quite frankly, full of it. I probably don't get outside my comfort zone nearly as often as I should, so my background is slanted. But I still like them. So I'm going to write about them.

The impetus was the start of SIFF 2008, at which I'll be killing entirely too many brain cells staring at a screen for close to 140 hours over the next month. Stay tuned...