A Sunday in the Country: That's pretty much it

I've been working my way through Roger Ebert's Great Movies and that's how I found A Sunday in the Country. This one didn't really do anything for me. It's about an old man who's children and grandchildren come to visit him in the country . . . on a Sunday. And, uh, not a lot happens. I guess that if you have a burning desire to find out what a typical lazy Sunday was like outside of Paris in the early 1900's this would be a great film for you. Otherwise, you can probably give it a miss.

Grindhouse: Like two old awesomely shitty movies, only way better

Now, I've seen my fair share of exploitation double/triple features thanks to the guys down at Exhumed Films and the Philadelphia Film Festival's Danger After Dark series, so I was well prepared for Grindhouse when I saw it with Corey and Ringo last night. The movie gets off to a great start with a fake trailer for Machete, starring Danny Trejo. It looks like just about the most awesome thing I could imagine:


Danny Trejo is such a bad ass that not only did he serve time in San Quentin but he also won the lightweight and welterweight boxing titles while he was there. I have no idea what "welterweight" is but I'm pretty sure that means he could kick the crap out of everyone in prison. And I guess I'm not the only one who who fell in love with the idea. It looks like Robert Rodriguez is working on a feature-length version of Machete. I've never been excited about a direct-to-video release before!

After the preview, we get into the meat of the film with Rodriguez's Planet Terror:


This is a post 9/11 zombie flick that is completely disgusting and an awful lot of fun. When people get shot, blood erupts from their bodies and cars blow-up for no apparent reason. The whole thing is just infused with a genuine affection for old exploitation movies and a real joy of film making. Oh, and somehow Rose McGowan with a machine gun leg is even hotter than it sounds:


After a few more super-awesome trailers comes Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof:


First of all, who knew that Sidney Poitier's kid (the irritatingly named Sydney Poitier) had such a great ass? Secondly, Kurt Russell is still great. I don't want to talk about the plot at all because I think it's got a couple of nice surprises. However, I will say that I think it's Tarantino's most subversive film to date. A lot of people seem to complain that this one is boring but I think that's because it's got a lot of character development. And that's something more movies could use.

Also, Grindhouse features Fergie and I think this picture pretty much sums up her role in the film:

Film Festival: Closing Night

Waitress

For the closing night of the festival they always show a bigger movie that's about to get a theatrical release. Waitress is no exception, it stars Keri Russell and on May 2nd it will open with a limited release. If I had to place this one in a genre I'd say it's sort of a drama with a lot of light romantic-comedy conventions and a dark streak to keep things interesting. I suppose you could label it a chick-flick but I have to say that I really enjoyed this one and I think it has the potential for broad-based appeal. Russell plays a waitress who is also a pie virtuoso (come on, that's just adorable) in a diner owned by a grizzled old man played by Andy Griffith (who, I was happy to discover, is still alive). The film was directed by Adrienne Shelly who was murdered shortly after the editing of this picture was completed. There are so few female directors working today (and, therefore, even fewer ones who are any good) that, after seeing this, I can say it's a real shame that the world lost this one. Essentially, her last act on this earth was to make a very sweet, funny, and touching film about life. I would recommend that you all see this one, it's a real crowd-pleaser.

Well, that's it. The film festival is over. In two weeks I saw 52 programs (I could have seen 53 but I overslept one day) and none of them sucked. I'm pretty impressed. Sure, a few of them were a little boring but they all had their moments. I'm completely exhausted and I've got a ton of work to catch up on, so I better go.

Oh, and that may be me in the audience pictured below.

Film Festival: Day 13

Out Of This World Animation

This is a collection of animated shorts (mostly from CalArts students). These things are always a mixed bag, most are good, some are pretty boring. The one I enjoyed the most was Golden Age, itself a series of shorts. The film presents the "E! True Hollywood Stories" version of newsreels about fictional cartoon characters (as opposed to real cartoon characters?) and their personal turmoils off-screen. It's pretty witty and has a good sense of animation styles through the ages as well as the darker side of Hollywood history. One great moment comes during a segment that lampoons wartime shorts like Donald Duck's Der Fuehrer's Face and Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (don't try looking for that last one on your Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Warner like to keep it under wraps). In it the villains are racist caricatures of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito. Only for Hirohito they use Chinese stereotypes instead of Japanese ones, priceless.

Dog Bite Dog

This is an incredibly brutal Chinese gangster film about a Cambodian hitman and the Hong Kong cop trying to track him down. It's a real competition to see which of these men is more ruthless in the pursuit of his goals and, although I'm not all that familiar with the situation, after seeing this film I could believe that all of China's human rights violations are perpetrated by the police in Hong Kong. This is a strange movie and when you think everything has been resolved, it just keeps going only to find more complications. This is also one of a few movies I've seen that has double subtitles (Chinese and English) and it's funny to think that China is such a large country with so many dialects that they have to subtitle their own movies so that the non-Cantonese speakers can understand what's going on.

Film Festival: Day 12

Ghosts Of Cité Soleil

This fascinating documentary is about the slums of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. The film primarily follows one of the five gang leaders who covertly works for the President to intimidate his political opponents. The gangster goes by the name '2Pac' and one of the members of his crew is named 50 cent. Things get a little confusing when the Haitian 2Pac calls up his friend the Haitian Wyclef Jean who is, like, the real Wyclef Jean. It's a great look at a complex political, social and personal situation where there are no real good guys. Only people doing what they can to survive in a terrible situation.

Trapped Ashes

The premise of this film is that six people get trapped in a haunted house while taking a tour of a rundown movie studio that is lead by Henry Gibson. (Excellent premise!) The gang realizes that they are being forced to reenact an old movie and everyone is forced to tell their own personal real-life horror stories. Each tale is told in flashback and is directed by a different person with Joe Dante directing the wrap-around segments at the studio. As with any of these things the individual segments are sort of hot or miss and unfortunately the best parts are at the beginning. The first one involves a woman who gets breast implants that come from real breast tissue recovered from cadavers (clearly, this will not end well). The woman's newly enhanced bust takes on a life of it's own and begins sucking the blood of any would-be suitors. It's sort of reminiscent of Rabid, the David Cronenberg film with legendary porn-star Marilyn Chambers. So, if you start off your omnibus with vampire tits, where can you go from there? Demon sex. That's what the second segment is about. Both of those are pretty great but what comes after that is a little bit of a let-down.

End of the Line

This is a good (but politically muddled) horror flick about a group of Christians who get the word that the Day of Reckoning is upon us and start killing everyone to save their souls. It is unclear how killing someone before Satan's army arises from the dead will lead to everlasting life. This was made on a shoestring budget but it does offer a few jumps and a lot of suspense.

Wicked Flowers

This Japanese horror film is sort of like Cube meets The Game with Michael Douglas, only a lot stranger. It's kind of slow but I have to give it props for being weird as all get-out.

Film Festival: Day 11

Dante's Inferno

This is an all puppet retelling of the classic with Dermot Mulroney as Dante and James Cromwell as Virgil, his guide through the underworld. It's pretty funny.

Judy Toll:
The Funniest Woman You've Never Heard Of

This is a labor of love by the brother of a comedienne who recently died of cancer. It's funny, it's got a lot of heart and it would seem cruel to criticize it.

The Living And The Dead

This is an interesting mix of a family drama and a horror film with the horror aspect being a combination of a well-meaning, mentally ill caretaker and his cancer stricken mother. It's not always easy to tell fantasy from reality and that only adds to the suspense.

American Fork

This movie is billed as being "From the makers of Napoleon Dynamite" but a more accurate description would be "from the editor, casting director and sound department of Napoleon Dynamite." I went in thinking this was going to be Napoleon Dynamite II and I was surprised to find a slower, more poignant film. It's got some really eccentric characters that are good for a few laughs, for instance it has a pompous actor played by a Baldwin brother (not the famous one or the crazy Christian, one of the other two) but it's more of a drama than a comedy.

Unholy Women

This is three short Japanese horror films rolled into one. The first and last section are both solid but it's the middle one that's a real gem. It's a funny, terrifying, and just plain bizarre tale about a boy who gets set up on a blind date with a girl who's got nice legs but is completely encased in a burlap sack from the waist up. She never speaks but does make inhuman, almost insect-like, screeches and her sack is lumpy and bulbous. Clearly, there is more than just a girl underneath. It ends with an act that I can only describe as (spoiler alert) a reverse-birth/consumption sex act. It's weird and wonderful.

Film Festival: Day 10

VHS - Kahloucha

This is a documentary about a guy (Kahloucha) who's basically a Tunisian Ed Wood. It's a lot of fun to watch him make Tarzan of the Arabs (pictured above) and see all of his friends crack up as they watch his work. It's also interesting to see who his screen heroes are. I wasn't surprised that Clint Eastwood was his favorite but who expect to him to know Jim Kelly and Alain Delon? If I hadn't seen his movies I'd say that he has great taste.

Viva

This dead on parody of 70's sex flicks shows a remarkable attention to details. Just look at that room, the clothes on the men, and the turquoise eye-shadow on that woman. It invites (and deserves) comparisons to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, although this film is more limited in it's scope. I really admire it for playing the entire thing completely dead-pan. A lesser film would have given into the temptation to wink at the audience. After the first minute I thought, surely they can't keep this up for the whole movie? But they did, for two straight hours. That would be my only complaint, though, the length. It's a remarkable exercise but, at it's heart, it's a one-joke movie and I think a briefer runtime would help. It's not that the film ever drags, or that it feels padded. I just think it's a super-awesome movie that's screaming for a more ruthless editor.

The Killer Within

This is the best documentary I've seen at the festival. It's about a man who shot his sleeping dorm-mate at Swarthmore College in 1955 and his decision to go public with this information after fifty years. He tells everybody, his daughters, his in-laws, his friends, his co-workers, his psychology students and the media. He says that he's coming forward because he wants to take a stand against bullying, which is what lead to his break-down and the subsequent killing (a the time he was declared mentally unfit to stand trial and spent almost five years in a hospital for the criminally insane). The film mostly follows his youngest daughter and her attempts to make sense of the situation which is only made more difficult when friends of the deceased come forward to deny that the killer was abused. It's a challenging film that raises many question (both ethical and factual) and doesn't provide any easy answers. It's a film that demands you to think.

Them

This is a frighteningly claustrophobic Romanian horror film that is made all the more terrifying because it claims to be based on a true story. Of course, you can't always trust movies to tell you the truth about something like that (I'm looking at you, Fargo). It's incredibly suspenseful and it hits all the right notes. I'd say that it's a stand-out in the genre, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.

Film Festival: Day 9

Dead Daughters

This is a solid ghost film but it has the shakiest camera movement that I've seen since The Blaire Witch Project. Only then there was a reason for it, in this movie the image just jumps all over the place for no reason. I can understand using hand-held shots during the scary parts to increase the tension or even having the camera move in every shot like Gosford Park. But having a spastic camera during mundane scenes is just irritating and Robert Altman pretty much stuck to fluid camera moves. Anyway, I sat really close and got a headache.

Trigger Man

This is a suspense movie that is incredibly slow. Probably because there isn't much of a plot (even at a glacial pace the runtime is only 80 minutes). Here's the story: Three friends go hunting. Someone (or someones) unknown starts shooting at them. They shoot back. That's it. I have to give the director credit for making it into a somewhat compelling movie but I definitely heard some snoring in the theater.

Severance

This movie rules, like you would not believe. It's a horror-comedy and it delivers on both fronts, in a big way. It'll be playing again as part of the Festival Favorites on Tuesday in the Ritz 5 at 9:30. Do yourself a favor and go see it. Seriously. I just saw 30+ films and this is the first time I'm giving you a show time and venue. But be sure to get your tickets in advance, I'm sure it'll sell out.

Comrades In Dreams

This offers an interesting look at people who run (very) independent movie theaters all over the world, from India to Burkina Faso to North Korea to Wyoming. The documentary is more about the people who bring the movies to their communities (that would otherwise have to do without) than the movies themselves which is sort of a shame because those North Korean propaganda films are pretty interesting.

The Secret Cinema Presents
Stag Movie Night: Vintage Porno From The 1920's, 30's and 40's

There's really nothing quite like watching porn with an audience of a couple hundred strangers and, if I'm not mistaken, a couple of people I know (don't worry, I won't out anybody). These shorts have an odd mix of the naturalistic and the artificial. It has women that come from an age before plastic surgery and, since these were shot on the cheap, it's unlikely that they did many second takes so you end up with shots of men awkwardly stepping out of their pants. But, at the same time, the women mimic the exaggerated, over-dramatic acting style of the silent stars of that era. Needless to say, it's unique.

Best line of the night: Behold, the gushing fountain of youth!

Film Festival: Day 8

Kurt Cobain: About A Son

This is an inventive documentary (although, not quite as inventive as Zoo) that uses a series of recorded interviews with Kurt Cobain combined with footage of the towns where he lived and the people who live there now to tell his life story. However, it notably does not use any of Nirvana's music and the only images of Cobain himself are saved to the very end. It can seem a bit tedious at times but if you're interested in the man or how fame affects people, it'll be worth the wait.

The Unseeable

This is my first ghost movie of the festival and it's from Thailand where, apparently, young women shower while wearing towels (no fun). It's got a ton of ghosts (which, by the way, are all quite seeable) and they all have their own back story. This film is loaded down with more sub-plots than it knows what to do with. It's definitely got it's creepy moments but it's mostly a big mess.

War In Peace (Shorts Program)

This program consists of two shorts, the first of which is City Harvest. It offers an interesting look at how a prison gardening program provides seedlings to community gardens, which use them to grow produce to donate to local food banks, which distribute the vegetables to needy families, usually in the same communities where the prisoners came from.

The second short is Recovering Satellites and it's about three Vietnam veterans who got short changed on a New Jersey memorial. It covers the story from two angels by telling the personal story of one of the men and it also gives the bigger picture of how we failed to support our troops during Vietnam. Can I just say that I'm a little sick of people who try to make me feel guilty for not giving the troops a proper welcome when they came back from Vietnam? I mean, I wasn't even around back then. But I guess people are still really upset about that. Hey, how about we make a deal? Bring the troops home from Iraq and I'll show up for the parade. Oh, and I promise I won't spit on anyone. Deal?

Cashback

This is a really great film that was adapted from an Oscar-nominated short. In fact, the entire 18-minute short is contained in the feature film. I'm tempted to describe it as Clerks meets Amelie meets my sexual fantasies but that doesn't really do it justice. It starts out as sort of a mid-twenties-life-crisis/slacker comedy but it evolves into something magical. It's full of wonder and surprises. You should all see it.

Film Festival: Day 7

Fair Play

This is a pretty solid French thriller. After a lot of corporate backstabbing they decide to make the annual office outing a rock climbing trip through a white-water-rapid-filled canyon. Clearly, they're not all going to make it out. The problem is that there comes a point when you realize that all of the characters are terrible people and that you don't want any of them to escape.

A Dirty Carnival

There's a lot going on in this post-modern gangster flick. I mean, a whole lot. I wouldn't even know where to begin but if you're a fan of Asian gangster films, or gangster films in general, it's not to be missed.

Eagle vs Shark

First of all a double shout out to Corey for coming to Princess and this, which he accurately described as a mix of Napoleon Dynamite and Wes Anderson. It's really great and, as I've said before, there's nothing sweeter than nerd love. If you have an affection for dead-pan humor and characters that are a little off you must see this funny, bizarre and wonderful film.

Princess

I loved this movie even though I completely disagreed with it's message. This film is against pornography (which I am for) and for violent revenge, including the bombing of innocent civilians and breaking the bones of small children (things I am against). That being said, this was an incredibly well-directed film. It has a stunning visual style, an inventive combination of animation and live action, and it takes a harsh look at disturbing issues you'd rather not contemplate. It's just a shame that the hero exhibits the moral code of a terrorist.