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.

Idiots And Angels

Anyone familiar with Bill Plympton's work might expect a full-length work to contain goofy antics and comical drawings, and while those are certainly present, there's much more as well.

Speaking before the screening, Plympton compared this piece to Lynch, and it's certainly apt. While the animation style is still roughly the same, there's a dark edge to the scenes, and certainly to the plot. A lonely, lecherous man harasses a barmaid, and then wakes the next morning to find wings growing from his back. A greedy barman, fame-seeking doctor, and a couple of miscreant bar patrons comprise the rest of the cast.

Told entirely without dialog, the narrative is still compelling. A couple of beautiful dream sequences really open up the range of the film, and the motivation of the characters comes through perfectly in their expressions and actions.

Definitely not for children, but a must-see for adults.

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.

Mirageman

The midnight movies at SIFF are usually cheesy B-reel stuff. And that can be great, as long as it's done with heart and a sense of humor. Mirageman delivers spectacularly.

Mirageman is a "super hero" who roams the streets of an unnamed city in Chile, battling evil and returning purses to little old ladies. Really he's a martial arts master with a younger brother whose fear of leaving his room seems to be helped by seeing Mirageman's antics portrayed on the local news. And of course there are plenty of people willing to bend his philanthropy to their own purpose.

Nearly every super hero series takes a stab at the "before they were famous" phase. Fashioning early versions of costumes is a favorite, and the inevitable mishap in the early tussle with a gang who has the upper hand on the hero. But few do it with such dead-pan humor and style.

Make no mistake, this is still a very low budget film. Costumes look like Goodwill handouts, and the acting isn't great. Don't look for complex character development or flashy special effects. But a couple scenes remeniscent of the Bruce Lee "climb the pagoda" movies and some awesomely cheesy dialog make this way more fun than most of the mainstream superhero movies.

Time to Die

I got the impression from somewhere that this would be a dark comedy. The story is of an elderly woman trying to stave off a greedy neighbor and son from taking her house for a land development project. Unfortunately, what I got was an extremely slow drama, which I couldn't force interest in. Because I went into it with completely wrong expectations, I won't rate this one. What I remember of it seemed well done, just not interesting to me personally.

American Teen

I'd heard beforehand that American Teen would be interesting, but I wasn't prepared for how completely fascinating this documentary turned out to be. A lot of it has to do with how close they got to the subjects, and I suspect they got lucky with the amount of drama in the school they chose, but whatever the reason this is a great film.

Focusing on four students with no real connection aside from the town they live in, the movie chronicles a year in a senior class in a small Tennessee town. There's the usual high school drama of dating, sports, outcasts, and college applications, and none of it is particularly unique. The special thing about it is how close they got to the students: cameras follow them on their most awkward social encounters, and during vandalism. Candid statements are plentiful, and give the director plenty of raw material with which to build a compelling narrative.

That's not to say that this is necessarily a likable movie. Aside from one or two participants, everyone depicted is irritatingly self-centered and oblivious to how ridiculous their actions appear. And in case that sounds like an average high school, remember that it applies more to the parents than to the students.

Still, it's a fascinating look at small-town America from an unusual perspective, and well done in every way.