Independent Film Festival of Boston 2007 Friday Night: Quiet City, Monkey Warfare, and Black Sheep

Independent Film Festival of Boston 2007 Friday Night: Quiet City, Monkey Warfare, and Black Sheep

Just capsules until later - not enough time between one movie ending at two thirty and another starting at noon. The crowd for Black Sheep (and accompanying short "Death Trike") was really into it, which is always fun to see.

Quiet City

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2007 at the Someville Theatre #2 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)

There were a number of films to choose from in this slot in the festival. I landed in Quiet City in part through process of elimination: This one got out too late to make the next one, that one was at another theater, that one would play again later. Once it was down to two or three choices, I chose Quiet City because the description read a lot like Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise. I liked that movie a lot, and I couldn't help but wonder why more independent filmmakers don't try to do something like it.

After all, it seems straightforward enough - you just need a boy and a girl and a city. In this case, the girl is Jamie (Erin Fisher), who just flew into New York City from Atlanta to meet an old friend. The boy is Charlie (Cris Lankenau), who she asks for directions in the subway. He takes her to the diner where Jamie's friend Sam said they'd meet, but Sam doesn't show and doesn't answer her phone. So Jamie crashes in Charlie's apartment and they spend the next day wandering around the city, looking for Sam and killing some time before going to an art show that Robin (Sarah Hellman), another friend of Jamie's, has going.

It seems logistically simple enough, but the very simplicity of it means that if the one crucial element fails, the whole thing becomes a disaster. Here, we've got to enjoy watching Jamie and Charlie together, because there's almost nothing else: No mystery to figure out, no ironies to savor, no action to dazzle. They are good company, though: Charlie's a scruffy but not ickily so, and he's not quite sure what to make of having this pretty girl attach herself to him. Jamie's playful, enjoying a break from her adult responsibilities, cute without being anything close to high-maintenance about it. They've both got a sense that they've stumbled onto something good, but aren't going to jinx it by mentioning it or making the first move.

Full review at HBS.

Monkey Warfare

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2007 at the Someville Theatre #5 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)

A description of Monkey Warfare reads as something a little zanier than the reality - aging hippies meet a young would-be radical when they need to find a new pot dealer, and find that they don't necessarily share the same values. And while it is a very funny movie, it's not the Cheech & Chong caper the audience may be expecting.

Dan (Don McKellar) and Linda (Tracy Wright) have been living off the grid in Toronto for fifteen years, collecting garbage and hitting yard sales for items that can be resold for more money. Their relationship is distant, and getting along without the weed looks like it could be a real chore. Dan, at least, thinks he might have found help on both counts in the form of Susan (Nadia Litz), a very pretty, very young girl whose supply of B.C. organic is soon matched by her interest in the radical past that Dan & Linda know far more of than she does - though they're only willing to share so much.

The characters talk a great deal about sticking it to the man or being anti-establishment in general ways, but writer/director Reginald Harkema doesn't spend much time having them pontificate on specific issues - indeed, Dan actually gets uncomfortable when Linda mentions she's doing some volunteer work. This is partly because there likely wouldn't be much debate or interesting disagreement; Dan, Linda, and Susan all believe pretty close to the same thing. The interesting differences come from how the generational differences effect them - Dan's starting to look at fighting the good fight (and the associated music and history) as things of nostalgia (and also thinking about how the bohemian lifestyle doesn't provide retirement benefits), while he and Linda are more than a bit taken aback by the younger girl's cynicism. She, of course, doesn't understand their aversion to direct action.

Full review at HBS.

Black Sheep

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2007 at the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival of Boston: IFFB After Dark)

Black Sheep is a whole ton of fun. It's not really scary in the least, of course, but it's got more genuine laughs than most comedic "horror" films, and is well-polished to boot.

Nathan Meister stars as Henry Oldfield, who is phobic about sheep - no wonder, considering what happened to his father when he and brother Angus (Peter Feeney) were kids. Henry is selling Angus his interest in the family farm, but while that's happening, Angus is preparing to debut a genetically engineered uber-sheep created by controversial scientist Dr. Rush (Tandi Wright) to foreign investors, while environmentalists Grant (Oliver Driver) and Experience (Danielle Mason) are looking to gather evidence that Angus and Rush are doing something highly unethical. Between Rush's lax protocols for waste disposal and Grant's being an idiot, this research makes its way into the wild, turning sheep carnivorous and turning those that they bite (but don't devour) into mad were-sheep with a similar taste for human flesh.

The basic absurdity of the concept, of course, is that sheep are some of the most docile herbivores on earth; they're fuzzy and lack even what might be considered useful aggression. Imagining that the flocks of sheep which I believe outnumber human beings in the film's setting of New Zealand could turn on their masters is an easy idea to come up with, but might be difficult to sustain over even ninety minutes. Writer/director Jonathan King and the visual effects team at the WETA workshop manage it in part by letting their sheep more or less be sheep - they don't have faces permanently contorted into anthropomorphic rage, and they don't appear to be bigger or more muscular. They look like regular sheep until they get close, narrow their eyes, open a mouth full of blood-soaked teeth and strike. A stampeding herd of sheep looks comical because it's so incongruous.

Full review at HBS.