Shrink

Dreamy and beautiful. It's relatively rare to find a really good ensemble drama outside of Paul Thomas Anderson's movies, and this is one of the really good ones.

For most of the movie the plot drifts in and out of small vignettes in the lives of Hollywood actors, agents, shrinks, and students, rendered against a beautiful sound-scape reminiscent of Stars Of The Lid. Sometimes only seconds long, the brief glimpses set a fantastic mood, while building a story so subtly that I found myself surprised when I realized how much foundation had been laid.

The entire cast is excellent, but Kevin Spacey is in rare form, possibly even more enjoyable to watch here than in American Beauty. Several climactic scenes had me nearly in tears from his expression and presence alone.

The plot and writing are very solid. It's not easy to weave such a scattered plot into something that grabs your attention.

This type of film in general is one of my favorites, and I'm always ecstatic when I find another that lives up to the genre. As the first show of the festival, this is a very good sign.

Towelhead

SIFF always seems to save a couple of the best movies of the festival for the closing weekend (mostly it's random junk), and this year it's Towelhead, a story of a young Lebanese girl growing up in Texas.

The story is slow, mostly about her difficulties finding acceptance with her friends, family, and herself, and that could be blandly generic if not for excellent writing and amazing cast and direction. Every performance is perfect, and there's an immense power behind the story, script, and direction.

When it gets a wide release, some people are certainly going to be offended by the fact that it contains frank examination of young teenage sexuality, and that it contains plot elements of abuse without making the abuser out as a total monster. But the honesty in every character is rare for a film about such touchy subjects, and it's absolutely worth watching.

Visioneers

Employees of the Jeffers Corporation, the biggest, friendliest company in the world, salute each other each morning with a friendly middle finger, happily complete their work handed down from Level 4, and dutifully ignore the fact that people around them are exploding from pent up frustration.

In a wonderfully twisted modern fairy tale with more than a touch of Brazil, the perils of boredom and facile distraction are presented as very real, and very fatal. The story follows the head of one division of the Jeffers Corp as he starts to realize that his life is not everything he thought.

There's a hint of Indie bareness under the surface, but it's totally excusable since the plot is just so damned original. Perfectly understated, perhaps even slow at times, but never boring. There are a few really great visual moments, and plenty of social commentary against everyone and everything. Don't expect jokes, or car chases, or anything resembling modern Hollywood's traditional output. But Visioneers is great anyway.

It's Hard to Be Nice

A low-level crook in Eastern Europe tries to go straight, to the dismay of his wife, friends, and cohorts.

Surprisingly relaxed considering the number of times the main character is beaten up, the film is a sometimes-funny look at the difficulties in breaking peoples perceptions. While the plot doesn't have a particularly strong arc, the gradual progression of the main character is fun, as are the vain and comically pompous side characters. The movie finds a lot of dry humor in the culture of the city that would be hard to replicate if the story were set anywhere else.

The cinematography is gritty and realistic, and the direction lets the actors stay understated but still seem strong as the focus. And although the pacing feels very laid back, there are enough twists that it stays interesting throughout. In the end, definitely worth seeing.

Jolene

Jolene is a movie that is quite obviously carried by the lead actress. On its own, while well shot, it's a relatively meandering story of ten years in the life of a young girl filled with one horrible relationship after another. But newcomer Jessica Chastain does a fantastic job of breathing life into the character, and in the end makes this film absolutely engrossing.

When I say meandering, I mean really absolutely no point. Nothing is learned by any character, and it's a little hard not to be frustrated at them when looking back on it. But this thought doesn't have a chance to surface until hours after the strength of the performances has faded, which is quite a feat.

Female Agents

Despite the extremely unfortunate translation of the title, Female Agents is actually quite good. A cheesier-than-Charlie's-Angels premise (a nun, a prostitute, a stripper, and a jilted lover go behind the lines in Nazi occupied France) is instantly forgivable when it becomes clear that the characters are written with great care, and the outcome will not be cheerfully banal.

The overall look of the film is bright and colorful, and a good contrast to the events unfolding within it. The direction is good, if not very imaginative, and the plot is excellent. The acting is quite good as well, although hidden behind intentionally fakey personalities for the first part of the movie. Not for the squeamish, but a great story based on true events for any spy or war buff.

Triangle

The second Johnnie To film of the festival (this time with two other directors as well) is arguably better than the first. Three low-level crooks are handed a business card by a mysterious figure in a bar, just before dying under strange circumstances. A heist ensues, with plenty of ill-fated romance and double crossing.

Dark and gritty like the rest of his work, Triangle certainly stands up next to the rest of the pantheon. Unfortunately this means that a number of plot points are reworked here, as several original scenes devolve into a madcap road trip and zany shootout in the third act. The beginning is good enough that this is definitely worth watching, and the ending is satisfying if somewhat formulaic.

Possibly not as good as Exiled, but definitely worth a look.

Seachd: The Crimson Snowdrop

Another film that seemingly cribs blatantly from Hollywood, Seachd is essentially a Gaelic version of Big Fish. The first feature film shot in the language, big budget special effects and a just-vague-enough story keep it moving along well.

As in Big Fish, a man visits his dying father and reminisces about the stories he was told as a boy, and his eventual rejection of the fantasies. But in this case the fantasies are drawn heavily from Scottish tradition rather than Tim Burton's messed up brain, and they're told with enough feeling that the film stays honest.

The writing and acting are good, but the vignettes and landscapes seem to steal the show from the actors. And that's definitely not a bad thing, as they're very well done. The stories felt almost a bit like the fantasy sections of The Fall in their level of uniqueness, which is saying a lot.

Phoebe in Wonderland

It's easy to go handle a movie about children badly. Either making them more childlike than they really are, or more cute, or even more adult. And I think there's a tendency to tone down the drama of the adults in the picture because children might see it and not understand.

Fortunately Phoebe has none of these problems, but delivers a touching and very believable story of a young girl coping with a difficult home life and finding out that she is different from other kids (I'll leave the details a surprise).

The cast is top notch. Felicity Huffman is fantastic as always, and Elle Fanning is, if possible, even more adorable than her sister. The writing and direction are great, miking fantasy and reality, adult drama and childlike confusion so that the entire thing has a wonderful flow. The story has some good twists, but this is very much a character driven movie, and the execution there is perfect.

Timecrimes

Now I get to say something that I'd really like to say more often: this was the best time travel movie I've ever seen.

The plot starts out simply; a couple is house-sitting out in the country, and the husband stumbles into a weird science experiment when he goes exploring in the woods. And of course, as with any time travel movie, things rapidly get more complicated.

And while the direction is good, and the acting is better than good, the key ingredient is that the plot fits perfectly and still leaves the viewer surprised at the end. It's hard to say any more without giving things away, but all the right pieces are here, and it's a really fun ride.

Choke

It's hard to imagine how Choke could be any better. Based faithfully on a story by one of my favorite authors (Chuck Pahlaniuk), staring an actor and actress I love (Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston), with good direction and a good soundtrack.

Vincent is a sex addict, who makes some extra money on the side by choking himself in restaurants and taking gifts from the people who save him. His mother is an aging freedom fighter hippie, who has a secret about Vincent's father. And the details as the plot unfolds are uniquely Pahlaniuk.

Unfortunately it's no Fight Club. The slick production and relentless energy are absent, which is a shame since they were so much fun there, even though they wouldn't really fit here. Instead, the film takes a leisurely stroll through dirty, gritty, faded reality and the people who inhabit it. Of course there's the humor that always ends up in his work, and it translates quite well to the screen. So while there's a vague sense that maybe the movie could have been just a bit more, it's still one of the better ones for this year.

The Wave

Most people should have already heard of the high school class in California in the '60s which created and nearly lost control of a fascist movement as part of a class project. And while several dramatizations have been made of those events, its hard to imagine any of them topping this German interpretation.

There are some obvious creative licenses taken with the story; the writers give in easily to the instinct to bring the Nazi government into the mix, and in this case it's warranted. And the story tends to diverge from the actual events the farther the film progresses. But a top notch cast and good direction retain the message even if the actual events stray towards fantasy.

Especially fine is the work of the lead actor, and his slow and unintentional descent into acceptance of his new role as leader. Which is not to say the younger actors don't hold their own, as there isn't a bad performance in the bunch.

Crisp cinematography finds many beautiful shots in the surroundings of a modern German city, and the direction and pacing are snappy enough that there's not a dull moment.

Otto; or, Up With Dead People

I came expected zombies. Instead I got an emo gay kid who was convinced he was a zombie, being exploited by a walking art school cliche. The dialog is stilted and delivered with way too much melodrama, and the plot really goes basically nowhere. Maybe there's some hilarious reference that I'm not getting.

The Great Buck Howard

Few things make for a good plot like abject failure, and The Great Buck Howard delivers spectacularly. John Malkovich, perfect as always, brings warmth and compassion to the character of an aging and nearly forgotten mentalist playing to half-full houses in Akron Ohio and similar out of the way venues around the country.

That's just a supporting character, albeit a large one. The lead is a law school drop-out who hires on as Buck's assistant in search of adventure and a way to break in to show business. The character is well played, and provides a good anchor for the story to balance Buck's posturing ("My good friend George Takei, who played Sulu on The Star Trek").

The premise at least is autobiographical for the writer/director, and the care taken in the script shows it. It's not a fast movie, but the pleasure is in watching the characters grow, rather than a driving plot. And with these actors, it works quite well.

Mad Detective

Perhaps mistakenly billed as a "buddy comedy" on the SIFF website, Mad Detective oscillates between nervous laughter, gruesome insanity, and tense mystery.

The main character is a brilliant but disturbed detective, who sees inner personalities as physically distinct people and solves crimes by re-enacting the actions of the victims in obsessive detail. Fired from the police force and re-enlisted by his one-time partner to help with a stale case involving a murdered officer, he is in danger of losing control again.

The film is beautifully shot but intentionally dark and gritty to the point of being depressing. The characters are all extremely flawed, and quite well played. I found the plot a bit convoluted, but the journey is a hell of a lot of fun, especially when the hero is simultaneously confronting seven physical personalities of a suspect.

While the comedy is quite good, the dramatic aspects are better than I expected. The main character has plenty of sadness in his past, and it's played quite well. And maybe it's just me, but the overarching theme of failure brought everything together brilliantly.

Ben X

There have been some relatively awful video game-themed movies (I'm looking at you, Fred Savage), but thankfully Ben X handles it quite well.

Ben suffers from the mild form of autism known as Aspergers, and as bullying and social ostracism grows worse at his high school, he begins to confuse his favorite swords and sorcerers video game with real life. The blending of the two works quite well, and adds a bit of surrealism to the story, but in the end this is more of a conventional drama than the description would suggest.

This is by no means a bad thing; the characters are strong, and easy to identify with. The actors do a great job, and especially in portraying the pain of Ben's parents as they find themselves unable to do anything to help their child. The bullies may be a bit overdone, but as a whole it gives a good sense of what the world looks like from his eyes.

A couple things could use improvement: like so many indie films, digital cameras hurt the overall feel of the movie. And a few scenes are drawn out maybe longer than necessary. But the good strongly outweighs the bad, and the message and acting make it well worth seeing.

Katyn

I have a feeling that panning this movie would get the same reaction as saying you don't like Schindler's List from some people, but aside from the subject matter it's hard to find many comparisons. Lacking strong characters and a coherent narrative, Katyn is just too sprawling and unfocused to draw the viewer in.

The subject matter had a lot of potential to be intriguing, focusing on the internment and brutal execution of a group of Polish military officers and intellectuals by Stalin's army. Unfortunately, the script focuses instead on some vague and much less forceful acts of oppression and censorship in Poland surrounding news of the event, rather than the event itself.

Family drama can be done well, but in this case none of the worst events happen to the characters we see, and the absence definitely hurts the film.

Butterfly Dreaming

It's hard to talk objectively about local film. There's a certain excitement at seeing a street corner I walk past multiple times a week as the setting for any movie, especially one as interesting as Butterfly Dreaming. Even with that aside, I think the work stands on its own.

The story starts abruptly, in an interrogation room of a police station, where a man is being questioned about his wife who recently died in a car crash. Missing chunks of memory leave him unable to answer, and his own doubts are raised when he begins to have visions of his dead wife, and a mysterious man claiming to be a police officer.

The production values aren't great; the entire thing definitely has an indie feel, and could have benefitted from being shot on film instead of digital, or at least having some post-processing applied. The acting is good but not great. At several points, I wished the actors would make larger movements instead of small twitchy ones. Still, they hold it together throughout, and it's more abou the plot anyway.

Surreal and intentionally confusing, and likely drawing more than a little from David Lynch, the progression of the surreal aspects is well paced, and the overall result is a fun ride, but not a great or particularly meaningful one.

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.

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.