Thanks to Corey, for the first time I had company for the whole day! We started off the day with this compelling Israeli drama about a Palestinian terrorist who is forced to spend a weekend in Tel Aviv after the button he planned to use to detonate himself failed. He ends up forming relationships with the electronics store owner who replaces his device and the beautiful shopkeeper across the street (both Jews). I'd just been reading about a recent study that found that people were more likely to become terrorists for social reasons rather than religious ones, so I was pleased to see that the lead was portrayed as someone driven to this act by issues having to do with his father's honor not religious doctrine. This is a challenging film that doesn't shy away from tough questions or give easy answers.
This documentary made me not hate advertisers. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean, Nike has had some really inspiring ads for an evil corporation. But I think the most important thing I got out of film is a respect for advertising as an art. And that's something that's easy to miss when you're constantly bombarded with advertisements, especially when the vast majority of them are terrible.
Two children run way from home one night and find themselves on a dark adventure in this Irish fairytail. The director gets wonderful performances out of the two young leads who highlight the first awkward steps into adulthood. They're kids who've had to grow up too fast but still haven't left childhood behind. The film begins in black and white but the farther the children get from home the more color is introduced into the pallette. In a way this story is a reflection of The Wizard of Oz. Only in this case it's the real world that is a more fantastic, and far scarier, place than home.
This is the movie that so many independent films strive to be only to come up short. It's from a director who really caught my eye last year and who I hope has a long and industrious career. The plot involves a Senegalese cabbie in Winston-Salem, North Carolina who figures out that one of his passengers plans on killing himself and tries to involve himself in that man's life. But this isn't a film about plot, it's about the characters. So many characters in films are artificial, they don't look like real people, they don't talk like real people, and they don't act like real people. But Ramin Bahrani has found a way to humanity, in all its pathos, humor and messiness, onto the screen and for that I am grateful.
What I'm told is a very popular manga is turned into a mediocre movie in this litterary adaptation. As far as I can tell the central premis is that group of boys came up with a story about a supervillian and some kid they wouldn't let play with them decided to become that villian. So basicaly, some guys spends his entire life enacting a plan thoguht up by twelve-year olds, incluging the giant robot that terrorizes Tokyo. It's all very silly but it's mostly played straight. I had originally plannes on watching the second installment of this three-part series later in the festival but I think I'm just going to put 2 and 3 in my Netflix cueue and try to find something more worthwhile in that timeslot.
2 comments:
Oh man. I'd love to see a film set in W-S (assuming it was filmed there). Though I doubt there are a whole lot of cabbies in actuality.
Well, you only need one taxi in the entire city for the plot to work. Besides, the director is from NC so I assume he knows what he's talking about.
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