Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 16 September 2011 - 22 September 2011

So, tell me - who reads these things even when they're weeks old? I constantly see them on my stats page, but I honestly can't figure why anybody would have any interest in them past Thursday.

Once again, the big release this weekend is opening all over the place, both in the multiplexes and some of the independent places. That's often the sign of something set up to be both a critical and box-office smash, potentially an awards contender. Although, then again, The Debt opened that way a couple of weeks ago.

• That movie this week is Drive, the next step in Nicolas Winding Refn's steady-but-unorthodox infiltration of the Hollywood mainstream. It stars Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver by day, getaway driver by night, who finds everything going sideways after a botched heist. I missed my chance to see Pusher 3 at Fantasia one year, but Refn's previous two English-language features have been intriguing and he's got a very nifty cast, so while the trailer for this one didn't do a whole lot for me at first, it's got serious potential. It's at Boston Common, Fenway, Coolidge Corner, Harvard Square, and Somerville.
  
  Other new releases include a remake of Straw Dogs, whose trailer looks OK, but why do you even bother remaking Peckinpah, even with a decent-looking cast. Plus, I kind of feel like I've seen variations on the "class warfare bringing out the worst in everybody" movie a lot lately. Its polar opposite would appear to be I Don't Know How She Does It, a comedy about a woman who juggles a high-finance job and motherhood. Sarah Jessica Parker stars, with a pretty nice-looking cast behind her. Including Christina Hendricks, who is also in Drive.



• Also opening at the multiplex: The Lion King 3D. On the one hand, it's a chance to see a pretty good movie on the big screen, spruced up nice. On the other hand, I can't really think of any movies more thoroughly built for 2D than traditional cel-animated features. Fenway will apparently be having 2D features, while AMC theaters showing it will put $5 on your Stubs card if you've got one.
  
  Boston Common also has some smaller releases on tap: Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain, a stand-up/documentary from a comedian who appears to have "next big thing" status. It opened in a several other cities last week to packed crowds, and will actually be showing on two screens during the evening. They also open Farmageddon, a documentary on the supposed war on small farmers who produce and sell raw milk by the FDA, and have Chinese films My Kingdom and Love in Space held over for daily single shows. And, holy crap, is that Bad Teacher back again? I think that's third-run by now.



• The Brattle is programmed almost like a regular theater this week, with Rapt starting Friday and running through Thursday. It's a thriller by art-house favorite Lucas Belvaux starring Yvan Attal as a mover and shaker who is kidnapped and held for ransom - but whose scandalous affairs leave his family wondering if he's worth paying to get back. It runs at 4:30, 7:00, and 9:30pm Friday - Monday (with 2:00pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday), but shorter times midweek to accommodate special events: 8:00pm on Wednesday so that Craig Thompson can discuss his new graphic novel at six, and 4:00pm on Tuesday and Thursday for special preview screenings.
  
  The Brattle's website reports that the Tuesday premiere screening of Pearl Jam Twenty is already sold out (but it will open there on the 23rd), but there should still be tickets for Tucker & Dale vs Evil on Thursday the 22nd. I've got no idea if Tucker & Dale will be getting a larger release in Boston, but it should - it's funny, suspenseful, and, yeah, kind of gross at times, a fun inversion of a certain type of horror movie.



• Opening Drive shifts Circumstance to a digital room at the Coolidge, withThe Debt remaining on the other 35mm screen. The special screenings include midnights of The Warriors on Friday and Saturday, presumably the original version as opposed to the one that's recently appeared on video with comic book-style transitions. Also at midnight on Saturday is the Betsi Feathers Burlesque Show, which is pretty much what it sounds like, but has the unusual cachet of having a member of the Boston Ballet (Betsi Graves) in the troupe.
  
  Sunday morning features the first entry in the Talk Cinema series; get there early for Thin Ice, which played Sundance this year under the name The Convincer and has Billy Crudup, Greg Kinnear, Lea Thompson, and Alan Arkin in a thriller about a rare violin. And on Monday evening, The French Connection appears on the main screen in its original 35mm glory - worth noting, because the movie on Blu-ray is much different than the one on film; William Friedkin changed the entire look of the film for that release. And on Tuesday night, there is a special Deaf Awareness Week event, with director Ann Marie "Jade" Bryan screening her film If You Could Hear My Own Tune, a romance between a deaf fashion student an a musician.



• Relatively quiet week at Kendall Square; they don't get Drive but do get Gun Hill Road, with Esai Morales as a parolee who must both attempt to go straight while his son challenges his beliefs on manhood. The one-week booking is also focused on the inner city, with documentary The Interrupters telling the tale of former gang members in Chicago who have set themselves up as "violence interrupters", intervening to prevent strained situations from erupting into violence. One of those interrupters, Tio Hardiman, will be appearing at the theater in person for the 6:35pm show on Friday (16 September).



• School's back in session, which means ArtsEmerson starts their film programs back up again! They kick the season off with a weekend of movies chosen by film critic Dave Kehr, including a double feature of pre-code movies by Raul Walsh on Friday - Me and My Gal with Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, which also runs Saturday the 17th at 2pm, and Sailor's Luck with James Dunn and Sally Eilers, which also runs Sunday the 18th at 2pm. The Saturday movies include The Driver, directed by Walter Hill, which is over a quarter car chases, and Wim Wenders's The American Friend, an adaptation of Ripley's Game with Dennis Hopper in the main role.



• They're also busy at Harvard, with the bulk of the weekend at the Film Archive reserved for Viva l'Italia!: The Risorgimento on Screen, which features a number of films chronicling the nineteenth century unification of Italy from various city-states. That's Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoon; Sunday and Monday evenings are a program called "For My Crushed Right Eye - The Visionary Films of Toshio Matsumoto". Matsumoto was originally scheduled to visit, but it appears he has cancelled, although the psychedelic, experimental films may be a draw on their own.



• The MFA has a quiet week - no screenings on Friday, Saturday, Monday, or Tuesday, and just a short film program running Sunday as part of the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Arts Open House. Also Wednesday and Thursday feature documentaries on artists whose works are posted in those wings - Ellsworth Kelly, Alex Katz, and El Anatsui, as well as a Wednesday (the 21st) screening of Kenya: Passing the Baton, a short documentary on the surprising breakdown and reconstruction of the nation over the past five years, with a panel discussion after the screening.



• There's actually several notable things happening at the Regent in Arlington: Saturday evening features two showings of "The Restaurant", a short film starring Lenny Clarke, Tony V, Patty Ross, Frank Santorelli, and many other local comedians as the waiters and customers in a Boston restaurant hear that a director who likes to cast unknowns is in town and angle to get discovered. On Tuesday the 20th, the Banff Mountain Film & Book Festival presents the "Radical Reels" program, a collection of short adventure-sport films, a theme that continues on Wednesday and Thursday with two Women in Adventure Sports film packages. All three of those nights figure to be action-packed, while "The Restaurant" promises red carpets and meet & greets with the cast.



• You know who else likes red carpets? The Boston Film Festival; I half-suspect that getting to hobnob with celebrities is the entire reason that this current iteration of the festival exists. It's a pretty thin-looking line-up this year, with Eric Shaeffer's new movie - After Fall, Winter - appearing to be the big World Premiere. Wednesday night does look somewhat promising, with The Trouble with the Truth and Fort McCoy, and Thursday Night's closing film still unannounced.
  
  I've been bagging on and bailing on this festival more and more over the past few years (and I'm tempted to try and guess the winners of its awards by listing the highest-profile people scheduled to be there in person), but I honestly take no pleasure in how thin it looks in 2011; it's honestly sad to see what it's reduced to, with nothing that looks terribly likely to crack theaters, a venue in the Stuart Street Playhouse that hasn't actually shown a movie in months, and even the usual list of expensive parties missing in action.

My plans? Drive. Rapt, I think. Maybe Contagion. Some of the stuff at ArtsEmerson, though I'll likely miss the Friday night double feature (Burlington to Downtown Crossing by 6pm just ain't happening). I'll probably go for The Lion King in 3D, because I have a hard time denying curiosity. And, who knows, maybe I'll even check something out at the Boston Film Festival out.

Boston Film Festival 2010 Day 06/07: Black, White and Blues, The 5th Quarter, Iron Cross

And thus we finish up with BFF 2010. As festivals go, it was a somewhat dispiriting experience, and in some days, Wednesday night is the best example of why.

The theater was dead for Black, White, and Blue. The program implied some guests - if you look through the program, some names are boldfaced; in general, that corresponds well with the guest list, but I don't think it ever specifically states that those people will be there. Thus, when something like Black, White, and Blue runs without Mario Van Peebles, Luke Perry, or Morgan Simpson showing up, that $10 ticket wasn't sold under false pretenses.

And it is pretty amazing how thoroughly guest-dependent things could be. As I said, almost nobody showed up for the first show of the evening, in part because it was unusually early (6:30pm, making it a tight thing for me to get there from Waltham after work), but, geez, you'd think a movie with Duncan and Perry, directed by Van Peebles, and also just happening to be pretty good, would get a little attention.

Folks did show up for The 5th Quarter, though. It was easy to see why in some cases, specifically the guys wearing the Wake Forest sweatshirts. It's a crying shame, though, because they got a pretty poor movie, one which poured the syrup on so thick as to be ridiculous. I imagine a fair number enjoyed it - some folks do like their inspirational sports movies to leave no room for doubt, but I found it pretty painful: Ten or fifteen minutes in, I could see how overdone it was, and just had that sinking feeling that it wasn't going to improve. It was also kind of weird that during the montage of Wake Forest winning a bunch of games, we almost never saw the main character directly involved in the action, which may be accurate, but weird for a movie. Also, for something that's apparently been in the can for a couple of years, it was surprising to see the occasional boom mike in the frame. It can't cost that much to have someone remove those digitally these days, especially with no rush on.

I think it does indicate a characteristic of the festival which I'm not sure should be properly categorized as a strength or a weakness - not many people seem to look at it as one big event. The Wake Forest football movie got people interested in the Wake Forest football movie, the Eliza Dushku movie got her fans (though she wound up not showing, despite the boldfaced name in the schedule), but you saw very few of the same faces over the course of the festival. I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it almost seems like promotion was put onto the backs of the individual filmmakers, with very little push to come see a variety of good movies that might not screen elsewhere.

Then, on Thursday, we saw Iron Cross, which was an even worse movie, but also called "extraordinary" during the introduction. I'm beginning to think that "extraordinary" is code for "not very good". Of course, around that, both in the introductions and the Q&A, there were repeated reminders to go to the closing night party, because that's what this festival is all about.

Obligatory photos of people who were there:

The 5th Quarter star Ryan Merriman and writer/director Rick Bieber

They made a bad movie, but were nice folks, so I don't really hold it against Bieber and Merriman. They had the Abbate parents with them as well, watching from the back of the theater, so even more than usual, my desire to ask "at what point did you realize that you were making a bad movie?" was inappropriate.


Iron Cross co-star Alexander Newton, Hollywood Reporter and CNN reporter Martin Grove, and Iron Cross writer/producer/director/editor Joshua Newton

For one show a year, the BFF brings in a professional to lob softball questions at the guests. I suppose I can't criticize both that and the lackluster job the hosts do at the same task. Still, you'd think someone like Martin Grove, a guy with "entertainment journalist" on his business card, would ask about the Variety screening series situation, as it is (IMHO) the most interesting thing about this movie.

For those who don't remember, Iron Cross actually had a small theatrical premiere in New York and Los Angeles in late 2009 and appeared in the Variety screening series around the same time, as apparently someone at the company convinced the producers that it might be an awards contender. The producers spent significant money to have post-production finished in time, only to be met with a bad review in Variety from a freelancer who saw it during its initial run. The producers complained, saying that the movie shouldn't be judged by seeing it in that environment, the paper took the review out of their online archive, people speculated on whether this was because the filmmakers had paid them to be part of their screening series (where, apparently, they stuck out like a sore thumb), the producers sued...

There's a great book in there, and an interesting look at how Hollywood sometimes works behind the scenes. Instead, we got a lot of boilerplate about how nice Scheider was, and how Newton edited it in his bedroom - which isn't as crazy and low-budget as it sounds; digital editing systems are pretty compact, and I've read a 40-year-old pulp novel that centered around editing a feature being done in a rented apartment, and that was using a moviola. I did ask whether they'd done any work on the movie since the whole kerfuffle, which got a "we're suing them" and not much else.

Well, that's the Boston Film Festival for another year. I'd like to be able to say that I'm making a principled stand and won't be back next year, but anybody reading this blog regularly knows that I am weak where that sort of thing is concerned. Give me movies that are even vaguely interesting that I might not have another chance to see, and I'll come. Of course, I've probably shot any chance to get a media pass any time soon, but I'm okay with that.

Black, White and Blues

* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

The name of Black, White and Blues is technically accurate, inasmuch as there's a black guy and a white guy in it, and they both wind up listening to a fair amount of the blues. The implication of that name, of course, is that race is at some point an issue, and aside from maybe one or two comments about the characters' musical preferences, this fairly entertaining road drama avoids that issue almost completely.

Jefferson Bailey (Morgan Simpson) has more or less reached the end of the line in Austin. He came out there to start a blues band, but right now, he's behind on rent, freezes up when he goes on stage, and drinks until he blacks out. Plus, he's not only borrowed some money from a local tough (Luke Perry), but he's been sleeping with his wife Jackie (Taryn Manning). Even still, he's not interested in going home when a man (Michael Clarke Duncan) shows up, saying his grandfather died six months ago and he has to collect his inheritance personally. At least, not until Jackie's husband gets wise and decides to extract his pound of flesh - then traveling back to Huntsville, Alabama with this Augy fellow starts to sound real good.

Jefferson likes the blues, while Augy goes for country, and while that's a bit amusing considering their respective skin colors, it's not long before the pair are commenting on how, though the two styles of music have different sounds, they often amount to the same thing. The movie itself plays like the blues and country - a recitation of sorrows set to a simple beat, but with a wry humor and open heart that helps to drive sorrow away. Augy and Bailey have both had troubles with the bottle and some bad luck in love, but this is far from being a movie about sad, irrevocably broken people; it's often funny, with the pair becoming good buddies fairly quickly.

Full review at EFC.

The 5th Quarter

* ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

The 5th Quarter doesn't look like a bad movie. It's well-produced, it has a nice cast, and single scenes taken in isolation look pretty good. Put it all together, though, and it becomes an unending stream of inspirational sport movie clichés that I feel bad about calling laughable, as it seems to be based on the lives of genuinely good people.

Teenager Luke Abbate (Stefan Guy) has everything going for him - loving parents (Aidan Quinn and Andie MacDowell) and siblings, and he's got the potential to be an even better football player than his older brother Jon (Ryan Merriman), who's a starter at Wake Forest (though, at the time, it's not a nationally renowned program). However, that will all be cut short, as he's involved in a single-car accident due to a friend's reckless driving. His loss leaves a void in his family, although Jon's teammates dedicate their season to him, and begin to defy expectations.

I don't care for football, but I've enjoyed movies centered around the game, from Harold Lloyd's The Freshman (silent comedy genius from start to end) to George Clooney's Leatherheads, so I feel reasonably confident in saying that it's not the game itself that makes me not care for The 5th Quarter. It's that the movie is less a story than an ordered collection of things that happened, laid out in such a way that what writer/director Rick Bieber wants the audience to think and feel is never in even the slightest doubt. Many movies do that, but few do it so obviously as this, and that's before considering the extremely incongruous moments.

Full review at EFC.

Iron Cross

* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010 Closing Night)

Under normal circumstances, Iron Cross would probably go direct to video (or maybe cable) without anybody paying attention; it's a bad movie but not egregiously or hilariously so. This one, however, was not only involved in a bizarre series of events involving an awards screening series, a pulled review, and a lawsuit, but also happens to be the last movie that star Roy Scheider made. It's thus an object of curiosity to fans of a good actor and bad blood.

Retired New York cop Joseph (Roy Scheider) is flying to Nuremberg for the first time in decades to see his son Ronnie (Scott Cohen), an actor who lives and works there. It's his first time meeting his daughter-in-law Anna (Calita Rainford) and grandson. He's been away a long time, and barely by now speaks the language, even though he grew up German; as a teenager (Alexander Newton), he barely escaped being rounded up by the Nazis because he was sneaking out to see his gentile neighbor Kashka (Sarah Bolger). Now, he's certain that Ronnie's neighbor, an elderly man by the name of Shrager (Helmut Berger), is the man who killed his family - but as Ronnie points out, Joseph tends to think that every old German is a Nazi. Joseph is undeterred, and his snooping actually leads somewhere.

In addition to being the father of one of the stars, Joshua Newton writes, directs, produces, and edits the film, and it's difficult to think of any job that he does particularly well (producing, I guess - the film got made and doesn't look like any corners were obviously cut). In some ways, the writing is particularly frustrating; he starts from a solid starting point (wondering what his own Holocaust-survivor father would do if confronted with the men who murdered his family), and beyond that, there's a vein of potentially interesting material to mine from how Joseph's relationship with Ronnie parallels that with his own father. Unfortunately, he spends a lot more time concentrating on the mechanics of the plot (which are often ludicrous) than these relationships. Of course, he also writes terrible dialog, so seeing them try to connect might just make things worse.

Full review at EFC.

This Week In Tickets: 20 September 2010 to 26 September 2010 (Boston Film Festival)

Nothing on the weekend because I was out on the cape, doing some tiny bit to see that my brother Matt got married safely. Congratulations, Matt & Morgan!



Stubless: Black, White, and Blues (22 September, 6:30pm, Stuart Street); The 5th Quarter (22 September, 8:45pm, Stuart Street), and The Iron Cross (23 September, 7:15pm, Stuart Street)

Since I didn't see anything else this week (I wanted to see God of Vampires at TerrorThon on Sunday, but thought it was playing at 9pm rather than 7pm), and I'll be catching up reviewing the stubless stuff in the next couple of days, here is as good a place as any to vent about the Boston Film Festival.

I washed my hands of it last year after two days, and heard a couple of references to the current incarnation having burned bridges with their prior venues, but came back this year after seeing it put together a potentially interesting line-up. Heck, there are at least three movies I would have liked to have seen (Miss Nobody, Conviction, Arcadia Lost). The films I saw tended to be right around average, with a couple worth a look and a couple stinkers, though.

I've been making a variation on this joke for a couple of years, but after attending this year's festival and following its tweets, I'm starting to suspect there's more truth to it than sarcasm: Festival director Robin Dawson and the rest of the staff really don't seem to be interested in running a film festival. They seem to crave the glamorous surface elements, but the core of a successful festival - bringing interesting films and filmgoing experiences to an audience - is sadly neglected. Compare this festival's schedule to what now must be considered Boston's two most prominent film festivals - April's Independent Film Festival Boston and March's Boston Underground Film Festival - and the younger festivals are light-years ahead, programming multiple screens, snagging films that go on to build great buzz and show up in theaters later in the year. They also form a personal connection between the festival organizers and the audience, presenting and highlighting other films year-round. I daresay that given time, the two genre film festivals run by Garen Daly's Zoetrope Media (February's Sci-Fi Film Festival and the currently-running TerrorThon) will make some of the same strides.

The Boston Film Festival doesn't do that. Within the festival, they don't do the most basic communication, like announcing that the screening of 127 Hours in the program isn't going to happen, updating the website with whether or not certain guests will be present, or telling the folks waiting in the lobby that the film is now seating or why it isn't despite the published start time being fifteen minutes ago. It's unlikely we'll hear anything from them until roughly next August, when they start trying to promote this year's festival again. The introductions to the films do nothing to fire the audience up, and the Q&As the festival staff leads are leaden and superficial. If you look at their site or follow their updates, the focus is strongly centered on the parties and the red carpet - the hobnobbing with celebrities parts. Admittedly, those are the parts of a festival I find least interesting just by my personal nature - I don't drink and have trouble hearing in crowds, so parties do very little for me, and the red carpet seems to be something of a manufactured event. No disrespect to Melissa Leo, who is a fine actress, seemed like a charming lady when doing her Q&A for Welcome to the Rileys, and deserves to be more A-list than she is, but I had to snicker when @BostonFilmFest tweeted two or three times in the afternoon that she would be Walking The Red Carpet that evening. I sort of get the red carpet thing at a big event with many prominent people in attendance, but what's the point of rolling out twenty feet of shag between the curb and a hotel's back entrance for one guest? Is watching that really exciting to people?

But, in a way, that's not a big deal. Different people may have different priorities from their film festival experiences, and if folks living in Boston want to drop $500 for an all-access pass that gives them a chance to hang out with some actors, directors, producers, and other filmmakers (note: this festival is the only one where I've heard a film introduced with "we've got the producer here, and the director, too")... Well, hey, whatever floats your boat. It's your money, and your fun.

What really got me this year, though, is how thoroughly manufactured this is. I laughed opening night, when I checked Twitter from my phone to see them crowing about their "sold-out" screening of Locked In - the stadium was 2/3-full, and I figured they must have been counting the people who bought opening/closing or all-access passes but opted to go to the opening night party or elsewhere instead. Sketchy, but technically true.

Then, the awards were announced, either as the festival progressed or on closing night, and it wasn't so funny. Here are the individual awards:

Best Director — Ed Burns, Nice Guy Johnny
Best Actor — Sam Rockwell, Conviction
Best Actress — Leslie Bibb, Miss Nobody
Best Supporting Actress — Melissa Leo for her three roles in Welcome to the Rileys, Conviction and The Fighter
Best New Actress — Jessica Romero, Down for Life
Best Young Actor — Alexander Newton, Iron Cross
Best Cinematography — Josh Silfen, To Be Friends
Best Screenplay — Rick Bieber, The 5th Quarter
Best Soundtrack — Tree Adams, Black, White and Blues
Visionary Filmmaker Award — Joshua Newton, Iron Cross
Career Achievement — Roy Scheider
Patrons of the Arts — Ernie Boch, Jr.

Now, put aside the most obvious issue, that The Fighter didn't even play the festival (though it would have been a great get, especially if local boy Mark Wahlberg came). Unless I missed my count, only two of the twelve people awarded were not in Boston to pick up their award in person - and Roy Scheider is dead.

Given what a relatively small percentage of cast and crew can often travel to a festival, doesn't that seem a little high? Individual opinions of what's award-worthy are individual opinions, but I would really like to hear the arguments that establish Rick Bieber's screenplay for The 5th Quarter as even good, or explain what, precisely, is "visionary" about the work Joshua Newton did on Iron Cross. Why is Ed Burns being awarded as Best Director, when his work was just sort of adequate, as opposed to Best Supporting Actor, where he was genuinely good? Why isn't there a Best Supporting Actor category at all? Would there have been one if Zach Galifianakis had made the trip to Boston?

It certainly looks like these awards are at least not entirely for the work in making the movie, but partly quid pro quo for making the trip, showing up at parties, etc. And maybe this is a common arrangement. But if it is, other festivals do a heck of a lot more to disguise it. They have audience awards and/or juries whose names and qualifications are published on the website or in the program. These look bought and at least bartered for.

And that's not good. It's rare that you see "Official Selection - Boston Film Festival" on a one-sheet, but not unheard of, especially since one set of words between a pair of laurel leafs looks much like another, and who looks too closely at those, anyway (as Bob Odenkirk spoofed in "The Frank International Film Festival")? But just like quote whores (whom my fellow EFC/HBS writer Erik Childress does a fantastic job of monitoring), festival awards that may not be legitimate devalue a useful way for audiences to try to ascertain the relative quality of the mass of films we have available to us.

A few people getting a little thrill out of meeting Leslie Bibb or seeing Aaron Eckhart walk up a red carpet isn't worth that. And, personally, I hate that the first festival I ever went to appears to be not just lame, but a sham.

Boston Film Festival 2010 Day 05: Welcome to the Rileys, Down for Life

What to say, other than it's another day of the BFF. This was likely the best night of the festival by default - one average movie, one pretty good. The guests were friendly. As a night at the Boston Film Festival goes, not bad.

One thing I noticed after seeing the Scott Free logo in front of Welcome to the Rileys: The Scott family is having a remarkably productive 2010: Ridley directed Robin Hood,his son Jake directed this, his daughter Jordan directed Cracks, and his brother Tony has Unstoppable coming up. Ridley and Tony are known for being workhorses and talented in their different ways, I really liked Jordan's Cracks, and I became more impressed with Jake's work here as I wrote about it. That's an impressive track record for one family in one year.

Obligatory photos of people who were there:

Welcome to the Rileys star Melissa Leo, who also appears in Conviction

Terrible picture, as is the one that follows. I apologize for it. Real film festivals turn on the house lights when doing the Q&As.


Down for Life director Alan Jacobs and star Jessica Romero

I got a little uncomfortable during this Q&A. I'm not sure how to put this without sounding like even more of a pompous jerk than I'm accusing others of being, but there's something a little weird about sitting in a room dotted with middle-class white people in Boston praising the film for being realistic and suggesting how it might be a good teaching tool for turning at-risk kids' life around. Granted, I know nothing about the folks around me in the room (judging from other BFF audiences, it may have been all people with a vested interest in the topic, me excluded), but that's weird, right? I feel comfortable judging it to be a good movie, and saying that it feels authentic, but I really don't know enough about the setting to give it that level of praise. It seems like people talking because they want to register support of the movie's messages, not because they really have something to contribute.


Gads, I've gone from criticizing the BFF's management to its audience. This festival really brings out the worst in me.


Welcome to the Rileys

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

Welcome to the Rileys is not a tremendously complicated movie, but it is somewhat elegant in its construction. Its characters, their backgrounds, and their actions fit together like two components of a model whose pieces have been precisely manufactured to have complementary shapes, which in a certain way is what they are. Still, the filmmakers do a good enough job of disguising some of the seams, keeping it from looking too prefabricated.

It's been a few years since the Rileys' daughter Emily died, and neither of them are really in good shape. Lois (Melissa Leo) has become acutely agoraphobic, never leaving the house; Doug (James Gandolfini) has settled on a different routine, one centered around a Thursday night poker game, followed by waffles at an all-night diner, followed by a tryst with waitress Vivian (Eisa Davis). This time, he mentions to her that he's got a business trip to New Orleans soon; would she like to come? Once there, though, someone else catches his eye: Mallory (Kristen Stewart), an runaway teen stripper who stirs his paternal instincts. When he sells his business to stay down there after the convention, Lois realizes that this may be it unless she does something.

What writer Ken Hixon is going for here is pretty obvious - these people have gaps in their lives that the others can fill, although the Rileys are soon going to realize that Mallory isn't Emily. It's constructed fairly well, though. The trigger for Lois's agoraphobia is very basic, but Hixon and director Jake Scott let the audience make the connection rather than force it. Doug has a gratifyingly similar reaction to the audience upon seeing a pre-purchased cemetery plot. Scott and Hixon deftly avoid pointing out that Mallory allowing Doug to pay for the privilege of looking out for her is not far off from the stripping and prostitution that she regularly engages in, which would likely make the movie creepier than intended, but the idea is there to chew on if the viewer wants to.

Full review at EFC.

Down for Life

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

Down for Life has good bona fides where authenticity is concerned: It's based on a New York Times magazine piece, much of the cast was plucked from the South Central Los Angeles streets where it is set, and during the festival Q&A its start confirmed that it was true to her experiences. That's better than many films that flash a "based on a true" story credit, and though this one seems to fudge the ending a bit, it generally manages to balance drama and realism.

The film is presented as an essay that "Rascal" (Jessica Romero) is writing in hopes of landing a spot in a summer program. We're soon introduced to her mother Esther (Kate del Castillo), who used to run with a gang but went straight, and stepfather Rafael (Kurt Caceres). What Esther doesn't realize is that Rascal is not just a member of a gang, but the leader of its girls. Before school, they provoke a fight with an African-American group (Rascal's gang is mainly Latina), steal their car, and bring it to the chop shop. That gets the other gang as riled up as you expect. There are tensions everywhere for her, though - while her teacher Mr. Shannon (Danny Glover) is encouraging her to apply to that program in Iowa, gang leader Flaco (Cesar Garcia) sees that as a threat to his authority over all members. Tensions at home have her trying to crash with Vanessa (Emily Rios), a former classmate who has moved to a nicer neighborhood, but her mother won't have that...

The life of a gang member, whether male or female, is violent, and Down for Life does nothing to hide this. Director Alan Jacobs does an unusually good job of showing violence as both part of everyday life in this environment and genuinely terrible. The opening fight between the girl gangs is technically remarkable - the vast majority of movies with a much larger budget that are trying to sell action to an audience don't choreograph and shoot a group of nine or ten nearly so well; this one keeps them all in frame and looking much more like they are fighting than dancing - but it's partially upstaged by a detail from before the first punch being thrown: The girls take off their dangling earrings without breaking stride; this isn't a catfight, they know that someone looking to inflict damage (as they are) will go right for those, and they've got practice. He does other things, too: He keeps sexual violence to a relative minimum, keeping the focus on danger to life and limb and not making this about men vs. women; he shows it as just as likely to arise from supposed friends as enemies (violence as a tool for maintaining a hierarchy); he makes it sometimes be almost completely random, with no warning or plausible justification. Those of us living in a better area will recoil, but the cast just plays it as something they deal with.

Full review at EFC.

Boston Film Festival 2010 Day 04: Cherry, The Last Harbor

I didn't have this thought at the time I was watching it, but a day or so later, while I was writing my review for It's Kind of a Funny Story, I did sort of idly wonder if I could take my review of that movie and modify it to be one of Cherry. The two aren't really that similar, but they've got some basic pieces in common - smart kid in a math-oriented field who really loves to draw, one parent pushy and one pushed, tossed alone into an environment where most everyone is older than him, a couple pretty girls attracted to him...

They are, in fact, fairly different, but once I had the similarities in my head, it was awfully difficult to get them out!

Obligatory photos of people who were there:


Cherry writer/director Jeffrey Fine and brother/producer Matthew Fine


The Last Harbor writer/director Paul Epstein, star Wade Williams, and producer Karl Richards

I feel bad about describing the shortcomings of some of these films, because all of the folks pictured seemed like pretty cool folks. The Fines were hanging out in the theater lobby before their movie, and I imagine any of the audience members who would have enjoyed some one-on-one time with them would have been able to get it. I'm pretty hard on Wade Williams (which I'd rather not be, because I liked him on Prison Break, a show that knew how to use him), but he was a genial, friendly guy with a big smile that you don't much see in his on-screen roles.

In other words, seeing a bad movie at a festival stinks, not just because it's a bad movie, or you're paying more, or it often means you sacrificed a rare chance to see a better movie for this piece of crud. Disliking a thing doesn't really feel bad, but feeling sorry for someone because you dislike it kind of stinks.

Cherry

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

By festival-schedule happenstance, I saw Cherry roughly 24 hours after It's Kind of a Funny Story, which has a fair amount of surface similarities once you correct for their different settings. Cherry isn't nearly as polished, but it's willing to make the audience squirm a little and occasionally go for the big laugh, which is worth something.

Aaron (Kyle Gallner) is a gifted student who comes from a long line of engineers, bright enough to be starting college at an Ivy League university a year early, and like many prodigies, somewhat awkward socially, which his new roommate "Wild" Bill (D.C. Pierson) takes advantage of. Still, despite the pressure put upon him by his sponsoring professor (Matt Walsh), he manages to attract interest from three different ladies: Darcy (Zosia Mamet), the nice girl on his floor who's also a target of Bill's hazing; Linda (Laura Allen), a "resumed ed" student in her early thirties that he meets in an art class; and Beth (Britt Robertson), her fourteen-year-old daughter. That's complicated, even before you factor in Linda's current boyfriend, Wes (Esai Morales), a cop who doesn't impress Beth much at all.

When writer/director Jeffrey Fine focuses on the mechanics of the college comedy, the result is fairly bland: The suffocating mother, hazing, gross-out jokes, and academic competition with a scholarship on the line, complete with villainous faculty member, all arrive right on time, and of course Aaron is going to discover that art is what he truly loves despite his parents' prodding (just once, I'd like to see hippie parents fretting over how much their kid likes math, and the film ascribing nobility to interest in science). As college movies go, it's not bad - the material with Aaron and Bill is actually pretty decent - but more than a little rote.

Full review at EFC.

The Last Harbor

* * (out of four)
Seen 20 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

I suspect that The Last Harbor will eventually show up on a cable channel rather than in theaters, and might be cheap and successful enough to get a follow-up or two. Mystery series have been built on less than "former big-city cop solves crimes in picturesque harbor town", but it works best with a more interesting sleuth than Ian Martin.

Ian (Wade Williams) is a drunk, and his latest outburst of behavior that gets stuff thrown out of court has him about to be drummed out of the Boston P.D. His captain offers him an alternative: The sheriff in his old hometown is looking for a promotion to a state job - why doesn't Ian transfer over there and while away the years until retirement in a two-person department in a town where nothing happens? It'll give him a chance to reconnect with his daughter Leanne (Austin Highsmith). One thing has crossed the desk, though - a girl who hasn't been seen in a couple of days. Ian starts digging and finds more than he bargained for.

As mystery stories go, The Last Harbor actually isn't bad at all. There's a full set of suspects who are all believably up to something, red herrings that don't feel like a complete waste of time when they're revealed, and motives that don't seem outlandish when finally revealed. Director Paul Epstein and co-writer Rand Marsh more or less plays fair with the audience, both in terms of not holding back clues that only the sleuth gets to see or having him do stuff behind our backs. With the right lead, this is a satisfyingly competent murder mystery.

Full review at EFC.

This Week In Tickets: 13 September 2010 to 19 September 2010

Let me tell you, the page is awesomely color-coded this week:



... green for the DocYard series, reddish-orange for "The Legacy of Psycho", pink for the Boston Film Festival, plus the various excursions outside of theaters.

It figures that Saturday had what looked like the most promising day for the Boston Film Festival - mostly for Conviction, which had Sam Rockwell in attendance to push a role that is apparently getting him some long-deserved awards buzz, although I'd have liked to see Miss Nobody; I like Leslie Bibb and the rest of the cast is nice, too - because that was the day of my brother Matt's bachelor party, which was pretty mild: Go to casino, eat at what is basically a family dining chain restaurant, and gamble. I didn't, because my high school math classes were heavy on probability and thus beat any notion that I could beat the house out of me, but my brothers and dad did. Go to stand-up comedy show, be mildly amused, gamble some more, take the bus back to the hotel because casinos are pretty dull - even the folks playing were just sort of going through the motions; it reminded me of nothing so much as playing solitaire on the computer and finding it had devoured an evening during which I could have been reading, writing, or just generally giving my entire attention to something engaging, with the added benefit that it's also likely to involve losing money. Plus, folks are smoking inside. It boggles my mind that either activity has any appeal.

Not that missing a night of the Boston Film Festival is much of a big deal in recent years; I'll be writing more about the festival in upcoming posts, but it's been fairly unexciting. Sure, only a couple movies have seen have outright sucked, but there's also no "you've got to see this" film to mention, either.

The Collector

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 September 2010 in the Brattle Theatre (Legacy of Psycho)

This one got bounced around the Brattle's schedule in some odd ways - originally scheduled for the 8th, bumped to a matinee on the 14th when the print failed to show, given evening showings when a preview screening was canceled - but I'm glad I got to catch up with it. It's a simple, stripped-down thriller with a pair of great performances by Terrence Stamp and Samantha Eggar. Director William Wyler and his writers set up a series of alternating escape attempts and potential Stockholm Syndrome situations that become increasingly tense and clever.

I also kind of like what the actors do with their characters' accents. Both start by speaking with a so-called posh London accent, and while for Miranda (the kidnapped girl), it's something she has grown into although the traces of her original mode of speech are still there, Freddie's is a thin veneer; Stamp reveals that there's something much rougher and coarser behind his attempts to sound sophisticated. Maybe one doesn't notice it right away, but when he finally lets his pretense drop, it's much more clearly something that's been there all along.

Dressed to Kill

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 September 2010 in the Brattle Theatre (Legacy of Psycho)

It's a bit amusing that Dennis Franz would appear in Psycho II a couple of years after appearing this, which cribs liberally from the Hitchcock masterpiece. It hides just how much pretty well, but the nobody-is-safe structure is a direct life.

Still, Brian De Palma isn't just doing a remake; this is very much his own movie, with plenty of tension and voyeurism and utter unflinching delight taken from the sex and violence. Nancy Allen and Keith Gordon are a hoot as an unlikely crime-solving duo (a hooker suspected of murder and a nerdy teenager), while Michael Caine and Angie Dickinson are perfectly smooth in their roles.

As can often be the case with De Palma (and many other directors), there's a thin line between excess (whether it be of sex, violence, plot twists, and Hitchcock homagery) being fun and being wearing, and toward the end of the movie, Dressed to Kill at the very least has a foot on each side of the line. De Palma's certainly neither the first nor last guy to extend his movie too far seeking one last jump, though, and the nature of his films must make going for it almost irresistible.

Boston Film Festival 2010 Day 03: It's Kind of a Funny Story, Nice Guy Johnny

I missed the second day of BFF (including a couple movies I really wanted to see) to go to my brother Matt's bachelor party, which started out at the Mohegan Sun casino in CT and finished with a rare-seeming win for the Red Sox at Fenway Park. I didn't gamble while at the casino, because I took way too much math (specifically, probability) in high school and college to even consider it.

That carried over to seeing movies on Sunday night. I bought tickets for these ahead of time, because although I was pretty sure that the weekday films would be easy enough to get walk-ups, these might be a different story - especially once @BostonFreeFilms started posting free passes for It's Kind of a Funny story. I arrived early enough that I might have gotten a seat from standing in the "rush" line, but $10 isn't a bad price to pay for a little certainty. Of course, finding out that anyone who came to see Funny Story would be allowed to stay for the second did give me a bit of a "why did I drop $20" feeling. But, as I said, I don't gamble.

Obligatory photos of people who were there:


It's Kind of a Funny Story writer/directors Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden

For a while, Boden & Fleck were pretty strongly associated with IFFBoston, working as volunteers/staff or having a film - documentary or narrative, feature or short - in the festival for every year (this year, Boden edited Children of Invention). Last year, Sony acquired Sugar early, but it played at Kendall Square soon enough afterward with them in attendance that it felt like an extension of the festival; this year, the release pattern for Funny Story led to it playing at BFF, which was kind of weird.

They're still some of the most pleasant folks you'll find to do a Q&A with. Their genuine enthusiasm for the material and their collaborators comes across, and it was interesting to hear Anna talk about how they really wanted to make use of effects, animation, and the like to visualize what is going on in their main character's head even as Ryan mentions how shooting the opening scene was kind of boring for him. It could come across as disappointment, but doesn't, and it's also a useful reminder of how even shots we take for granted today are very technical.


Nice Guy Johnny actress Kerry Bishé, writer/director/actor Edward Burns, and festival director Robin Dawson

I've got less to say about this one. Ed Burns has been doing this for a while, and as I say in the review, I admire his dedication, even though he doesn't come across as a really outstanding writer/director. I think he'd like to be Woody Allen, and is trying to set up his career in a similar way, but he's got skill rather than genius. This was another Q&A with a fair amount of students in attendance, and as such took the inevitable "pick up a camera and start shooting, since you can do amazing things with digital now and while theatrical distribution is almost impossible, video and on-demand give you a lot of options if you can keep costs down" route.

As much as I love film, it is amazing how digital has evolved in the aughts - Lucas was doing something really radical when he shot parts of The Phantom Menace digitally before announcing that the remaining two Star Wars films would be shot that way, and now cameras like the Red One are all over indie cinema, and it has made distribution much less of a crippling expense - when I was working in a Worcester movie theater, I was told a single print cost $8K, which means the prints for even a platform release for something like Nice Guy Johnny would not just increase its budget, but multiply it.. I think Funny Story is the only film at the BFF that was screened on 35mm film; everything else was a digital projection of some sort or another.

It's Kind of a Funny Story

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

The title of It's Kind of Funny Story is its own review. It's just a matter of where you want to put the emphasis. It's got enough jokes and amusing moments to qualify as a "funny story", but plays things so safe that "kind of" might sum it up better. That's a shame, and a surprise, considering how engrossing the previous two features from the team of Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson and Sugar) are.

As the film opens, 16-year-old Craig (Keir Gilchrist) is about ready to throw himself off a bridge. He's not a victim of abuse or anything; at worst his mother (Lauren Graham) is a bit nervous and his father (Jim Gaffigan) has high expectations. He's on medication for depression, and his best friend Aaron (Thomas Mann) is dating Nia (Zoe Kravitz), the girl he adores. Instead, he goes to a psychiatric hospital and checks himself in for observation - not realizing that (1) the juvenile ward is shut down for renovations, so he'll be with the adults, and (2) it's a minimum five day stay. So he's going to be spending the better part of a week with people who have come much closer to killing themselves than he has - notably Bobby (Zach Galifianakis), who pretends to be a doctor to sneak outside, and Noelle (Emma Roberts), the other teenager on the floor.

Funny Story is an easy movie to like, in large part because Fleck, Boden, and the cast do a respectable job of creating a cast of characters that are able to sell a joke without seeming to treat mental illness in an excessively cavalier manner (disclaimer: I have never had to deal with such matters directly). Craig's family and friends are exaggerated, but for the most part manage to balance being funny with showing genuine concern while also having difficulty relating to him; they're flawed but generally likable characters performed well. The patients are by and large confused and frustrated by how their brains just won't send the correct signals, and while some like Matthew Maher's Humble seem a little more zany than troubled, others like Craig's Egyptian roommate Muqtada (Bernard White) are agonizingly paralyzed.

Full review at EFC.

Nice Guy Johnny

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

As much as I hate the bilious broadcasts that pass for sports talk radio here in the Northeast, I kind of doubt that Oakland, California, is laid back enough that a host who goes by "Nice Guy Johnny" would fly, even in the overnight slot - and that's before hearing the bland commentary he's dispensing as the movie opens. Now, Nice Guy Johnny the movie isn't going to rise and fall based on the authenticity of the similarly-named radio show, but what we see and hear is telling nonetheless - mainly, that friendly but shallow responses to artificial dilemmas are on tap.

The host of the "Nice Guy Johnny" show is Johnny Rizzo (Matt Bush), a transplanted New Yorker about to turn twenty-five, at which time he has promised fiancée Claire (Anna Wood) that, if he wasn't making $50,000/year, he would take a sensible job - and her father has just lined one up for him, as a supervisor at a company that makes cardboard boxes back East. He's less than enthusiastic. When he arrives back home and meets his Uncle Terry (writer/director Ed Burns), the bartender is openly dismissive, wondering why he's still with Claire anyway, and invites Johnny to join him on a weekend trip to the Hamptons. There, Terry and one of his girlfriends immediately try to set him up with her tennis instructor, Brooke (Kerry Bishé), who also thinks it is a dreadful idea. And, since she's a cute, athletic, outspoken sports fan, is probably perfect for him. But he's engaged, and made a promise, and is a man of his word...

That Brooke is more or less Johnny's ideal match while it's hard to see how he and Claire have tolerated each other for three years is simplistic, sure, but it's not necessarily a terrible thing to set up such a clear differentiation. It's disappointing, though, that Burns isn't willing to simply let them represent the opposing values of risk and security. No, Claire has to be a domineering, distrustful shrew. Similarly, the description of Johnny being nice to a fault is accurate, and it makes him a bit dull, while Uncle Terry is just as absurdly dishonest.

Full review at EFC.

Boston Film Festival 2010 Day 01: To Be Friends, Locked In

I try to be nice to the Boston Film Festival every year. I come in thinking that this year, I'll bite my tongue, go into movies with a positive attitude, hand out business cards and make a good enough impression that they'll actually put me on the mailing list next year. And for what seems like every year under the current management, I've failed. Something about the attitude just rubs me the wrong way, and even before the festival starts, I'm annoyed.

For instance, when clicking on the "festival" tab of their website brings you to the party schedule, and there's a line there that says

Get your exclusive party pass now, these are the biggest events of the entire festival! Don't miss out!

... then someone like me who thinks that the films should be considered the festival's biggest events starts to grind teeth. I always feel like this particular festival is built from the parties outwards, and that's no way to make an excellent festival.

It's not all the festival directors. Take opening night. I was already in a foul mood when I got there because of issues printing off my tickets and staying at work late on a Friday afternoon - I couldn't print at the office or get an internet connection at home, so I only had my ticket for To Be Friends. Naturally, the folks at the BFF table didn't have any way to check/print off a ticket, referring me to the box office, who initially tried to refer me back to the BFF folks (aside: how do you not have a laptop or something set up so that you can check this, but have three volunteers sitting at a table to hand out passes?) before handing me a pass. The Stuart Street Playhouse people were great.

Anyway, that frustration may have led to me initially giving it a slightly higher star rating than it really merited; there was a weird overcompensating for my bad mood going on, as well as trying to separate the film itself from the remarks director James Eckhart made before and after the screening - someone saying to "let the film wash over you", or something similar, tends to set off my pretentiousness alarms, but the work itself shouldn't be judged on that. It was also a weird Q&A session, mostly filled with Emerson College students who tended to introduce themselves as such and by name before each question, maybe hoping Aaron Eckhart or someone else would remember them.

Okay, that's needlessly cynical. Not so much so is a tweet about the "sold-out crowd" for the second feature of the night, Locked In. I suspect it was "sold out" in that there were people who bought passes and packages that included both opening night films and wound up going to the opening night party rather than seeing a movie.

(deep breath)

OK, for those of you who dig filmmakers on stage doing Q&As:


Left to right, Joelle Carter (who I didn't realize was Ava Crowder from Justified until IMDBing her), Todd Stashwick (between them, the entire cast), writer/director James Lawrence Eckhart, and his brother, executive producer Aaron Eckhart. Todd and James did most of the talking, with Joelle agreeing and Aaron confirming that his involvement in the picture was mostly limited to "writing a check".

And now, reviews!

To Be Friends

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

To Be Friends is beautiful in so many ways - it is exquisitely shot and scored. The acting by Joelle Carter and Todd Stashwick is true and emotional, and director James Lawrence Eckhart lets the story unfold at the right pace. The thing is, while the dialog is unquestionably artful, it's also the case where beauty may or may not be in the eye of the beholder.

A man (Todd Stashwick) and a woman (Joelle Carter) are driving to a cabin in a beautiful, secluded spot on the California coast. They are longtime friends, and she wishes that they were more; he has of late been wary of any romantic relationship, much less one with his best friend. They speak about it in aphorisms and riddles before addressing it directly, but also just spend a weekend enjoying each other's company and playing music together (he plays cello, she violin) before confronting the reason why they came to this place at this time.

There are certain expectations for the dialog in a modern movie, particularly one like To Be Friends that is, by and large, two people discussing the nature of friendship and romance, and where their relationship is situated on that spectrum. The usual inclination is to make it sound real, or at the very least, make it sound real plus two on the clever scale (how people wish they talked). Eckhart doesn't go for this; instead, he opts for a very theatrical mode of speech. Carter and Stashwick are not shouting to be heard in the balconies, but the words coming out of their mouths are, simultaneously, very declarative, laying the characters' feelings out there very directly, and very artificial. Nobody talks like this for very long, and watching it will likely bring to mind a one-act play taken off the stage and shot on location. It feels very different from even other talky films, and while some may enjoy the stylization, others (like myself, much of the time), will find the artificiality distancing.

Full review at EFC.

Locked In

* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 September 2010 at the Stuart Street Playhouse (Boston Film Festival 2010)

Locked In is a pretty terrible movie, although one where the audience might be willing to make allowances for budget, or at least give some of its off-seeming moments a conditional pass, just in case the all-but-inevitable twist ending explains them. It defaults on that loaned good will, of course, but by then it already has your money and your time, and what can you do about it besides give it a one-star review on your blog?

To put it mildly, Josh (Ben Barnes) has an uncanny ability to destroy holidays. The film opens with him driving his family home, Christmas tree tied to the top of the car, and having a bizarre, apparently self-inflicted accident that somehow leaves him and wife Emma (Sarah Roemer) more or less unharmed but four-year-old daughter Brooke (Abby & Helen Steinman) in a "locked in" state - technically conscious and aware of her surroundings but unable to more or acknowledge them. To twist the knife a little more, this was an attempt at a reconciliation for Josh and Emma - on Halloween, Josh turned stepping out to pick up more candy into going into a bar, having a few drinks, and hooking up with old flame Renee (Eliza Dushku). Now, Ben's receiving mysterious phone calls that sound like Brooke and seeing other clues that lead him to believe that Renee ran them off the road. He also gets into contact with Frank (Clarke Peters), a guru who apparently can help them reach Brooke and bring her out of her unresponsive state.

The movie starts off with an absolutely bizarre car crash, a scene that feels as though director Suri Krishnamma knew the story needed a car crash but had no actual money for a stunt driver, so it's cobbled together with distorted shots of one of Boston's tunnels and sped-up footage. It's odd-looking enough that it may temporarily either blind the audience to how the scene makes no sense, or give them the mistaken impression that it's just a flawed bit of execution, rather than a character just doing something for no reason other than the plot outline demanding it - with neither Josh nor Emma remembering any particulars because the movie would fall apart if they did.

Full review at EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 17 September - 23 September

So, no Toronto for me last week. But, it's consolation prize time:

• The Boston Film Festival runs at the Stuart Street Playhouse from Friday to Thursday this year. I'm hopefully going to be spending much of the week there, because I have a hard time just giving up on it, even if my first reaction is to snarkily say that they're a natural fit because both have fallen well short of their potential in their current iterations.
  
  Still, this looks to be one of the best schedules that they have had in recent memory - a good mix of locally-shot productions, films with awards/other buzz, and potentially interesting discoveries. I'm looking forward to Miss Nobody, Conviction, and It's Kind of a Funny Story (directed by local favorites Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck); I'm morbidly curious about closing night feature Iron Cross (the film at the center of the Variety screening series controversy earlier this year). And Stuart Street is a nice place to see a movie, with a spacious lobby, decent projection, and plenty of seating. It will be interesting to see what it's like when seats are actually filled.
  
  (Amusingly, I'd have to give reviewing I Want So Much to Live a pass even if I didn't have Red Sox tickets for that afternoon, since it's about a company that my day job does a fair amount of business with. Not because I'd be likely to butter them up, but because the review would become thoroughly tainted by what a pain in the neck their drug makes my work!)



• I was initially shocked that BFF didn't try to open with The Town, but that's apparently because it opens wide the same day, on just less than every multiplex screen in the Greater Boston area (hey, it shot here and Ben Affleck is still our boy - dude was an usher at one of the theaters where it's opening). There's actually a pretty decent-looking slate opening in what screens are left - Devil looks like a tight horror film, Easy A a smarter-than-average teen comedy, and Alpha and Omega a harmless-enough 3-D animated kids' movie.



• One of my favorites from Fantasia, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, opens at the Brattle Theatre, but for an extremely limited run - five screenings at 9:30pm on Friday (17 September) and from Sunday to Wednesday (19-23 September). Trust me on how good this is, and do not watch the trailer! It gives away less than it might, but, honestly, you want to go into this one cold.
  
  The limited screenings are due in part to how many other things are booked for the Brattle this week. Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno plays evenings and weekend afternoons, a making-of documentary for a film that was never finished, as archivist Serge Bromberg pieces together the rushes from the three weeks Clouzot shot Inferno in 1964 with interviews and any other information he could find. A complete Clouzot, Wages of Fear, is a free screening at 11am Saturday morning as part of the "Elements of Cinema" series. Thursday is given over to a book reading by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan plus a mystery screening. And the Saturday night Alice Creed screening is sadly usurped by "Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog" (this screening is for charity, so it's got that going for it, but Joss Whedon's foray into Youtube videos bumping a precious screening of Alice Creed is uncalled-for).



• The Coolidge opens Mademoiselle Chambon, an intriguing-looking French romance, on one of the film screens, and I'm Still Here on one of the digital ones. On top of that, there are several worthwhile-looking single screenings: Midnight showings of Ferris Bueller's Day Off Friday and Saturday, with "Naked Girls Reading: Science Friction" in the other theater at midnight on Saturday; German film I've Never Been Happier Sunday morning; a "Big Screen Classics" screening of Brazil Monday evening; and See What I'm Saying on Tuesday, which is open-captioned so that it is accessible to both the hearing and daf/hard-of-hearing. Also on the schedule is the premiere of Ken Burns's Baseball: The Tenth Inning with Burns and co-director Lynn Novick in attendance, although it is sold out (watch that page to see if the theater can release some tickets).



• At Kendall Square, the one-week-warning is for Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which I saw at IFFBoston and, well, did not like very much at all. Also opening is Zhang Yimou's remake of Blood Simple, A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop



• The Harvard Film Archive has more Pier Paolo Pasolni on Sunday and Monday. Before that, though, they welcome Portugese director Miguel Gomes to town for a two-night retrospective, "The Musical Imagination of Miguel Gomes".



• The MFA continues last week's series Local Filmakers Present, this time including Thy Will Be Done, Everyday Is New, Radio Cape Cod, 45365, Birthmarking, and The Olmstead Legacy. As with last week, many screenings will be preceded by shorts.

So... Anyone know good places to grab quick snacks between screenings at 8 or 9 near Stuart Street?

Boston Film Festival Day Two: Racing Dreams and In/Significant Others

In order to avoid saying more unkind things about the BFF (I think I said all I had to say about this day in the TWIT post) - and because actually getting the review of In/Significant Others finished seemed to take forever, let me just say that I really liked Racing Dreams. It's a fun documentary that should play well to almost any audience.

In fact, most of the docs at BFF looked pretty good; it's an odd irony of film festival scheduling that the documentaries almost always feel fresh and exciting, likely to show the festival-goers something they had never seen before, but are often shunted into smaller screens or less-convenient times. This holds true at the boutique theaters and on television, too. It's a shame more people don't take a chance on them. Not all docs are good, but I strongly suspect that the top 10% is better than the top 10% of fiction features.

Unrelated thought on this documentary... I hope that I don't have aunts and uncles stumble upon this and call me up asking how I couldn't have known about the WKA, because some cousin did that for three years. I don't think it's the case, but it's also not out of the question.

Racing Dreams

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 September 2009 at Landmark Kendall Square #3 (Boston Film Festival 2009)

I admit that I don't give auto racing a whole lot of thought in general, but one aspect which I gave particularly little thought to was where new drivers come from. Make all the jokes about stock car racing being about putting one's foot to the floor and occasionally turning left, but driving a race car is a skill that can lead to fiery death without proper training. So where do these guys learn the ropes? Well, a lot of them start by racing go-karts (which can obtain speeds of up to 70mph) in the in the World Karting Association (WKA), and they start young.

How young? Well, Annabeth Barnes is 11 years old at the start of the film, and though she's just moving up to the junior circuit, she's already got a website to which she can point visitors to the WKA's annual convention. Also at that convention are two others kids that Marshall Curry's cameras will follow over the next year: 12-year-old Josh Hobson of Birch Run, MI is expected to be a force on the junior circuit; 13-year-old Brandon Warren (like Annabeth, hailing form North Carolina) is moving up to the senior circuit, though he has a reputation for rough driving. Their paths will cross at the five national races, but what they do in between is even more interesting: Brandon, who is being raised by his grandparents, has his father come back into his life; Annabeth starts to notice boys and regret how time spent racing comes at the expense of time with her friends; and Josh's family struggles with how to support what is a rather expensive and time-consuming hobby.

Oh, and Brandon thinks Annabeth is kind of cute. The feeling is mutual, and watching the two of them together (or talking on the phone, or talking about each other) is one of the many delights of the movie: They're a refreshingly honest pair of tweens, talking into the camera without reservation because they've got nothing to hide, but also not putting on a performance. Annabeth and Brandon make a nifty visual, too: Annabeth is tall while Brandon is short; she looks like a Disney Channel star whether she's in her racing gear or the pink she favors when hanging with her friends, while he's buzz-cut and has the look of a wild man about him. It's a fun little dynamic, and it doesn't take away from their individual stories.

Though Josh and Annabeth are racing against each other, Josh's story winds up being a different angle: While Brandon and Annabeth seem to be having fun first, saying they'd like to race cars when they grow up in the way enthusiastic kids do, Josh is serious and focused. He's not unpleasant or bratty - he seems like a thoroughly pleasant kid - but he has a level of concentration that allows him to ignore his parents' concerns about what this is costing, or to study and imitate every aspect of how real NASCAR racers act, right down to how they thank the sponsors. His consistent high finishes aren't joyless, but there is something inevitable about them.

The Hobsons aren't the only ones with concerns over the cost of racing, although they are the ones who talk most frankly about it, figuring that each national race costs about five thousand dollars, no small expense for a family from blue-collar Michigan. (It's amazing how racing maintains an image as a blue-collar sport, considering how corporate and expensive it is, even at this level!) Director Marshall Curry does a very good job of putting his subjects at ease on this and every other topic that comes up, which is especially impressive in the case of what goes on with Brandon's family, where grandfather Phil's worries about Brandon's father Bruce are illustrated in a way that isn't violent, but might make the audience wonder if the fact that he's on-camera means nothing to him. After all, even Brandon seems to be on his best behavior when the camera's rolling, for all the talk about suspensions from school, liking to fight, and perhaps being sent to military school. It's a credit to Curry that we still feel like we're getting a complete picture. He also does nifty things with Annabeth's solo story, letting us think about whether she's being stage-mothered without hitting us over the head with it.

All of this provides more than enough fodder for those with little interest in actual racing, but Curry captures that well, too. An early scene with Annabeth addressing the camera over a simple graphic elegantly describes the opposing forces that the driver has to balance, and then the action begins. Curry and his crew do an excellent job of capturing the action of all ten races (five for each of the two age levels), drawing the audience in even though who will be the points leaders at the end of the circuit is not very much in doubt after the second race or so. There's an attempt to inject some drama into the final race, but Curry and his co-editors maybe oversell it with some very heavy foreshadowing. The actual action of kids driving open-topped go-karts that can hit seventy miles per hour is more than enough.

As frightening as that sounds, we're reminded toward the end that karting is only the first step on the road to NASCAR stardom - the next is to start racing full-size cars... At the age of twelve.

Also at HBS.

In/Significant Others

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 September 2009 at Landmark Kendall Square #3 (Boston Film Festival 2009)

In/Significant Others is the very definition of an average movie. No moment raises a flag - well, okay, some do, but they may be among the film's most interesting, at least in hindsight. No actors perform poorly. No scene seems to go on too long. And nothing ever catches fire to excite us.

And, really, something should. Writer/director John Schwert starts tossing his various intersecting plot-lines at us early: We've got Greg Rizzo (Mark Scarboro) trying his hand at stand-up comedy, trying to equal the success of his brother Jack (Brian Lafontaine). Greg left a steady job to do that, which is not making things easier for his wife Leslie (Ashlee Payne) and sick baby. We've barely had a chance to meet Iraq war vet Bruce Snow (Burgess Jenkins) before he's shot and killed a man, who had supposedly attacked his wife Salem (Tiffany Montgomery). It turns out, though, that it was Christina Ludum (Andrea Powell) - the woman Salem had been seeing while Bruce was away - who had a problem with him. Of course, Salem and Christina meet in the café where Jack's fiancée's sister (who, naturally, has addiction problems) works.

Just in case the film didn't seem to be covering all of its indie-drama bases, we spend some time seeing the characters interviewed documentary-style, which is at least sort of interesting because the person doing the interviews is terrible at his job. At first this seems like a strike against the film, until we get through a couple and realize that the interviewer (Brett Gentile) and his sound guy (Scott Miles) are going to be actual characters in the film. It's not pulled off perfectly - they aren't given the same depth as the other characters, but still get involved in the plot. Still, there were a couple of moments where I figured that these guys were the film's most original creations, and that there's an entertaining movie to be made about a guy who wants to be a documentary filmmaker but simply cannot form any sort of rapport with his subject.

The filmmakers form one of the main ties between the various stories, and it is honestly a very contrived way to bring the two stories together. Take the filmmakers away, and what's going on with the Snows and what's going on with the Rizzos connect only in the most tangential way. The themes of the two halves don't exactly complement each other, either: The story with Bruce, Salem, and Christina is a crime story built on guilt and manipulation, while Greg, Jack, Leslie, Susan, and Joanne are a story of family bonds and obligation. It feels more like two movies that happen to take place in Charlotte and have been edited together than a single film with multiple main characters.

If the film was split in two, each would have a pretty good cast. Brugess Jenkins is the standout; he presents Bruce to us without a great deal of outward torment, but also manages to keep us from seeing him as a sociopath or the villain of the film. Relative newcomer Tiffany Montgomery is similarly impressive as Salem; her frailty is evident despite the lack of hysterics. LaFontaine and Scarboro are very good as well, catching the vibe of brothers who know each other all too well perfectly. Lafontaine, especially, does a fine job of not shying away from the things that may make his character difficult to like.

Watch enough movies, and you'll see a lot that have quite a bit in common with In/Significant Others. Some are better, though many more aren't as good. Schwert and company manage to come up with some memorable characters and moments, which puts them ahead of the pack.

Also at HBS.

Boston Film Festival Day One: Motherhood

Even before new management took over the Boston Film Festival, it always had a hard time getting great guests, and used a familiar scheme to attract one per festival: The award. One studio film which would be getting a major release would be given a notable timeslot - often the Monday at 7pm - there would be no second screening in that theater afterward, and a big star would be given an award, make a little speech, and conduct a Q&A after the movie. I think you paid a bit more for that screening - $15 as opposed to $10 - and you were well advised to buy in advance, both because there were a lot of VIP seats and because folks really dug the idea of seeing a movie with Steve Martin or Kevin Kline.

Now, they still give the award, and there's a Q&A for the featured movie, but if you want to see the award presentation and speech, it's $150. In my less charitable moments, I tend to think that the $150/person party is the festival's entire reason for being now: It gives people a chance to hang out with a movie star, and just enough movies are booked around it to make the thing look legitimate. I doubt that's actually the case, but it's one of those theories that fits the facts too well to dismiss.

Anyway, this year's guest was Uma Thurman, with Motherhood's writer/director, Katherine Kieckmann, also in attendance. They certainly seemed nice enough, and although it wasn't one of the all-time great Q&As - for me, it's hard to beat the raw enthusiasm you see at Fantasia, where the audience is better-prepared than most junket tables and the filmmakers seem like they'd generally be happy to talk genre films all night long - give credit to the audience for paying Ms. Dieckmann as much attention as Ms. Thurman. Host Sara Edwards (a TV critic, I think working for Comcast these days) seemed to be favoring Thurman at the start, but shifted her focus pretty quickly. Yay us!

Something I just thought of: The dates on the calendars in this movie are pointedly May, same as Mother's Day. It is, of course, being released in October.

Motherhood

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 September 2009 at Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Boston Film Festival 2009)

Mothers and fathers have a demanding job, and anybody who denies this is a fool. I don't think many would deny that, even in today's modern world, motherhood is more demanding than fatherhood, and probably always will be. That's why I think that Katherine Dieckmann's film named "Motherhood" is a bit of a disappointment: It tells you that motherhood is a big deal, but mainly shows it to us as a sequence of annoyances.

Eliza Welsh (Uma Thurman) is a stay-at-home mom with two kids - Lucas (David & Matthew Schallipp), who is 2, and Clara (Daisy Tahan), who turns six tomorrow. Her husband (Anthony Edwards) is a somewhat scatterbrained fellow who fills their apartment and car with books, and her best friend Sheila (Minnie Driver) has had her husband leave her despite her pregnancy. Today promises to be a hectic day, as Eliza has a birthday party to throw for Clara, the film crew that has taken over her block has towed her car, and she's just found out about a writing contest for a parenting magazine whose deadline just happens to be that night.

I don't think Motherhood means to be a whiny movie - in fact, I think it's often aware of just how annoying it could be in that regard - but sometimes it seems like it just can't help itself. In one scene, for instance, Eliza has to mention unbidden that she's got two apartments in her building. That's just the most obvious example, but this is at times the sort of movie where people who are incredibly fortunate recognize their good fortune but spend a lot of time complaining anyway. We repeatedly watch Eliza flipping out over things that, individually, don't merit such a strong reaction.

The other side to this is that those little things can be pretty funny. Dieckmann has collected plenty of funny anecdotes from her own experiences, and there is something satisfying about watching Eliza act out when confronted with things that the rest of us grin and bear. The crazy Manhattan parents she encounters in the park may seem exaggerated, but they certainly work as jokes. She also gives nice, specific touches to many of her characters - how Eliza looks out for her elderly neighbor, how she labels the pictures she takes of her kids, or how Clara wants everything to be purple. There's an especially fun scene early on where Clara is just utterly immune to her neighbor's snobbishness.

Heck, little Daisy Tahan may be giving the movie's best performance during that scene; aside from being adorable, it completely establishes what kind of kid Clara is. Many of the other members of the cast don't get a chance to create a character that specific; Anthony Edwards and Minnie Driver are well-done variations on the absent-minded dad and best friend, for instance, doing well by that, but never quite add enough to them that they could seem to exist as something other than adjuncts to Eliza. Alice Drummond and Arjun Gupta fare a little better as characters with just one or two scenes where they get to explain themselves. Uma Thurman is good most of the time, especially when Eliza is just going about her business; when the script requires her to get a little farther-out, she has a little trouble bringing it back down to Earth.

That's in large part because Dieckmann is trying to cram everything into one hectic day, and that doesn't always work. A large part of the movie is Eliza claiming that it's the cumulative effect that wears on her, and we wind up having to take her word for that since we don't see her outside this particular day. The writing-contest deadline is artificial, meant to give the movie a ticking clock but not ever shown as urgent. Some of what Eliza does is just absurdly overdramatic, and the end feels too much like a windfall cop-out.

The funny and charming moments outnumber the cringe-worthy ones, though. The movie sometimes seems to have a difficult time deciding on whether it wants to focus on "motherhood" or Eliza's specific issues, but generally does well by both.

Also at EFC.

This Week In Tickets: 14 September 2009 to 20 September 2009

Before getting to the customary page from my calendar, let's look at a page from the program of the Boston Film Festival:



Now, keep in mind, they only have one screen at Kendall Square this week. Obviously, that page is a pretty spectacular misprint. That is, sadly, what I've come to expect from the BFF lately. Unfortunately, I don't have a phone with a camera, and didn't have my battered-but-still-functional six-plus-year-old 2MP brick with me this weekend, or I would have been able to take a picture of the thing that really annoyed me beyond all reason - the signs on the festival's table that said the other two films supposedly playing Tuesday night had had their times "changed".

Look, folks make mistakes. I'm occasionally embarrassed to come back to reviews a few weeks later, find some missing word that would have been caught if I'd been using a real word processor rather than a text editor or just been paying closer attention. Just be honest and admit you've made a mistake. Stick a photocopied erratum into the program, calling it an error. Don't put up signs that imply that the times in the program were at one point accurate, because that doesn't make you look more competent, it makes you look both incompetent and insincere.

That's a pretty small error to complain about, I admit. But it just seems so typical of the BFF experience, especially compared to just about every other film festival I've visited. The old BFF, even though the people running it were more or less invisible, was at least professional. Here, though, every single film I saw was greeted with the exact same amount of mild enthusiasm.

And that's why, when you look at this:



... you only see three tickets from the festival, rather than a patchwork where I try to figure out how to cram all eight I'd originally planned to see over the weekend in. As much as I liked Racing Dreams, I just couldn't bring myself to stay after In/Significant Others. It was a thoroughly bland movie that thought it was clever, and looking over the rest of the schedule, the rest seemed to be more of the same: Nothing that promised excitement or invention, but which would prompt an identical "wasn't that awesome?" from our hosts afterward.

Congratulations, guys. You've killed my enthusiasm for the first festival I went to and enjoyed. Thank goodness for the Archive, eh?

Waterloo Bridge

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 September 2009 at the Harvard Film Archive (James Whale: Of Monsters, Melodrama and the Production Code)

One of James Whale's first movies, and it's not bad as pre-Code melodramas go. It's kind of charming, in that they just don't make movies that are this earnest any more. It's got Mae Clarke as a fallen dancer who is reduced to streetwalking to support herself, and not doing that well, but who still has the requisite Heart Of Gold, especially when she meets a kindly fellow American in London, and he is so Good that she is inspired to become the better person that she always has been.

To be honest, I don't know if you could make a movie like this any more. It's just as simple as it sounds, but that works for it, most of the time. There's familiar supporting characters with broad accents. And there's an ending which just strikes me as empty irony. Maybe it was devastating once upon a time, but now it's just the sort of anti-cliché that is no longer surprising.

Impatient Maiden

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 September 2009 at the Harvard Film Archive (James Whale: Of Monsters, Melodrama and the Production Code)

A year later, Whale re-teamed with Mae Clarke for a third film - she was also Elizabeth in Frankenstein - and I liked it a bit better than Waterloo Bridge. It's a bit more comedic, recognizing that its set-up is kind of contrived, and the broadly-sketched supporting characters (Whale never met a thick accent he didn't like, it seems) are a bit funnier. It's more than a little overwrought - I think Lew Ayres's character decides he is basically done with Clarke's after she says she's not thinking marriage after one date.

This one is hypocritically moralizing in its own way - failure for a girl of nineteen to settle down with the first nice man that comes along leads to being ostracized, a burst appendix, and potentially death, while the man who didn't trust her has no loss of standing. The characters are charming and there are a number of funny bits, and Clarke is able to rise above the way her character is seen by outsiders.