Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.08 (Closing Night, Wednesday 2 May 2012): The Queen of Versailles

And the last night, as usual, comes at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, in the big room. We all know what that means - duck!


The IFFBoston staff has prizes for you - look out!

Apparently, the festival staff did not get rid of all of the previous year's t-shirts a week earlier at opening night. They also had plenty of chips from Utz and fruit bar things from another sponsor that they were determined were not going to sit around in their pantries. A surprising number of them found their way to the older lady sitting next to me, and I won't say that I wouldn't have preferred she snack on those rather than the gigantic, smelly pickle she did pull out.



After that, the award winners were announced - find them here - and seeing as I didn't see many of them, I've got little to say about that, other than that Fairhaven may have benefited from a large contingent of locals voting in the audience award. Awards at film festivals are an odd thing, even compared to the end-of-year variety; when you see the laurel-leaves on posters or packages, you've really got no idea what the competition is or who the voters are. It's weirdly without context, but the potential is apparently tempting. Still, based on what I did see, some of these must have been pretty good to edge them out, so congratulations.



This is, I think, the second time I've seen Lauren Greenfield at IFFBoston; she was here six years ago with another documentary, Thin, which I quite liked, and she's had a documentary short here at some point in between. She answered a few questions about the subjects, with a great deal of the interest being related to one of Jackie's friends back in her home town and her comment to Greenfield (alluded to in the view) that the director perhaps knew her husband's mind better than she did at that point. Greenfield talked about finding a somewhat unexpected love story in the movie, which wasn't exactly what she expected. For the most part, though, the film spoke for itself.


And so, the festival ended, the folks in those top two bits of Horrible Photography had a good night's sleep, and got started planning the 2013 festival the next day. For my part, it's time to start focusing on Fantasia Festival -- anybody want to split a room in Montreal this July/August?

The Queen of Versailles

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 May 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Times are tough for everybody, although "tough" can be a relative concept. The further you get from the bottom, not only does it get further from what many would consider really difficult, but harder to sympathize, at least in the abstract. The Queen of Versailles aims to make the abstract specific, and if not sympathetic, at least interesting.

Jackie and David Siegel can be seen as the epitome of conspicuous, wasteful consumption. As the film opens, Jackie is 43 and David is 72, with seven kids of their own and one niece of Jackie's that has come to live with them. David is a billionaire, having built a time-share empire from the ground up, and while they currently live in a twenty-six thousand square foot home, they are building a much larger Versailles-style mansion - at ninety thousand square feet, it would be the largest single-family home ever built in America. At least, they are until the financial crisis, when people stop spending on things like timeshares just as David is trying to open a massive new property in Las Vegas.

The Siegels live large as the movie begins, arguably grotesquely so. The parties with every entry in the current Miss America pageant are kind of amusingly grandiose at times, sure, but it's the ingrained excess in other places that may make the audience uneasy. It's not enough to have one badly-trained, yappy little dog, for instance; Jackie has many and has had many more. A comment she makes about nannies making it easier to have kids kicks that feeling up to the next level. The palace that they intend to build is the most obvious example, but in some ways, as much as it's gaudy, it's just building a nice house with all the amenities they can afford; it's amplified, but not different, compared to a random audience member's desires and experiences.

Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.07 (Tuesday 1 May 2012): Paul Williams Still Alive and Rubberneck

Ah, the Tuesday of IFFBoston. The "showcase day", when the festival shows two movies that aren't deemed to be opening/closing night material but are worthy of being shown without alternative screenings. During the three previous years, a different venue got this day (the ICA in 2009-2010, with a tendency toward documentaries on the creative process; the Stuart Street Playhouse last year, in what amounted to the venue's swan song); this year, it was at the Coolidge, although upstairs rather than in the main theater.


See? "Cooldige" behind Paul Williams Still Alive director Stephen Kessler.

This was kind of an interesting Q&A, if only because it occasionally made me wonder whether Kessler completely recognized what film he was making. He mentioned at one point that Paul saw it as a film about recovery, but the expression he gave indicated that he really didn't see it that way. Talking with my friend Beth afterward, though, she sort of had the idea (which I, admittedly, run with in the review) that it was less about Paul's recovery then Stephen's, with Paul as the counselor who eventually weans him off low self-esteem and fantasies. It's perhaps an unusual take, and from the way he talked about working with his editors (who had to convince him to put himself into the movie), it almost seems to have made it into the movie completely as subtext.

Or at least, it sounds that way from the way he talked about it. I doubt that one can make a movie that holds together that well by accident, especially since that seems to be such a major theme. Maybe he, much like Paul, doesn't really want to talk about himself, and so downplays that.

There were, of course, the inevitable questions about whether Paul is working on anything, leading to the much-repeated news that he's collaborating on something with Daft Punk, which should be interesting, if nothing else. And whether they still hang out together, which led to this:



Mr. Williams seemed surprised by the call, but really, you'd have to think this was inevitable.

(Yeah, I know that photo looks worse. I have no idea why the Coolidge uses those red lights during the Q&As other than maybe wanting only the official photographers with huge flashes to have usable pictures. I have no idea how that first one came out well.)

After that, a quick trip to the lobby before it was time for Rubberneck:


Cast & Crew of Rubberneck, with writer/director/star Alex Karpovsky holding the mic.

As you might expect for a movie shot and set in Boston with a ton of local actors and crew had a lot of guests.

I kind of wish I liked it more. I saw what I think is Karpovsky's first feature, The Hole Story, at the same festival (in the same room!) about seven years ago, and while he's got access to some better equipment and has improved technically in many ways, I think that in some ways, Rubberneck is weaker in part because it's more sound. The Hole Story wound up losing the plot but had Alex playing a main character that was something of an individual, while there's nothing terribly odd or illogical about what happens in Rubberneck (by true-crime standards), but it winds up very generic.

And with that, it was time to get home and sleep fast before work and the last day of the festival.

Paul Williams Still Alive

* * * (out of four)
Seen 1 May 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

It's okay to look at the title of Paul Williams Still Alive and have a reaction somewhere between dismissal and dread. Documentaries about musicians who have faded into obscurity in part due to substance abuse are so common that festivals might as well list them as their own program. This one, at least, finds a couple of ways to present things differently, although the results are a somewhat mixed bag.

It's easy to be wary of these differences from the start, when director Stephen Kessler's description of Williams's career as a singer/songwriter/celebrity in the 1970s focuses just as much on how he viewed it as an awkward kid in New York as it does on Williams's actual work, if not more so. For all that he was a huge fan, Kessler assumed (as many did) that Williams had died sometime in the 1980s, only to learn of the man doing an appearance at a screening of Phantom of the Paradise (the truly bizarre 1974 Brian De Palma update of The Phantom of the Opera in which Williams played the villain as well as writing the songs) in Winnipeg. Once there, Kessler asks permission to tag along and make a documentary on Williams's life and career, although Williams often proves to be a reluctant subject.

Paul Williams Still Alive won't necessarily be disappointing to those looking for a straightforward biography, but there's a lot of Stephen Kessler in the movie, even if he does not always appear on camera all that much. It's a balance that the movie quite often struggles with; having an idea of just how intrusive and annoying having someone chronicle your life can be makes Williams's clear annoyance at various points funny as opposed to really uncomfortable, but Kessler lays it on rather thick at times. The filmmaker's initial fannish excitement at hanging out with Williams the way he'd dreamed of doing as a kid giving way to the discovery of a real human being rather than just a celebrity persona eventually becomes the actual story the movie tells. There are a lot of times, especially toward the start, when many in the audience will wish for Kessler to fade into the background because he's not what they came to see, and even when he starts to feel more integral, that first impression can be hard to shake.

Full review at EFC.

Rubberneck

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 May 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

It doesn't happen very often, but Rubberneck is almost too simple to classify. It's got characteristics of both a thriller and an indie drama of the character-study variety, but the only thing that seems unique about it is the setting, which doesn't contribute much to making the action interesting.

One night after a research laboratory's holiday party, scientists Paul (Alex Karpovsky) and Danielle (Jaime Ray Newman) hook up. That's enough for Danielle, but eight months later, Paul is still hung up. Kathy (Dakota Shepard), the girl he sees on occasion, bears a strong resemblance to Danielle, who finds herself attracted to new hire Chris (Dennis Staroselsky), not aware of just what sort of issues Paul has had since he and sister Linda (Amanda Good Hennessey) were abandoned by their mother.

Simplicity can be a fine thing for a movie like this; it would be easy for Karpovsky (who also directs) and co-writer Garth Donovan to pile subplots and twists on top of their story, but they opt not to. If there were more to that story, that would be admirable, but Rubberneck is so straightforward that some sort of digression might be welcome. Instead, it follows an uninspiringly logical outline, maybe not quite predictable but seldom surprising, with one thing leading to another without any sort of random event that might make the audience reconsider what is going on.

Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.06 (Monday 30 April 2012): The Revisionaries and Headhunters

The Monday on the IFFBoston schedule is sort of an in-between day - it's not a big moviegoing night in general, so few of what are expected to be the big premieres are playing (although the demand for El Bulli last year seemed to catch them by surprise). It's a good night to catch up on short programs and maybe a repeat or two from early in the festival, and not have to walk around that second corner to get to the end of the line.

To take last things first - as I did in reviewing, so that something would be in time for its Boston opening - I quite liked Headhunters, and more than just a little delighted when it ran on 35mm film. A few years ago, I mentioned that most of what I saw at a festival was on video and was told that it was probably just a combination of luck and the fact that I was selecting smaller entries to watch; I don't think that would be the case any more. I wouldn't be surprised if the only two things on film were Headhunters and Beyond the Black Rainbow, both already picked up for distribution by Magnolia and, with Boston dates already booked, playing IFFBoston as a sneak preview as much as anything. I get it - print costs are expensive, especially for independent filmmakers - but 35mm still looks a lot better than HDCAM.

There was also talk about the seemingly-inevitable American remake, which is unfortunate. While there's nothing in Headhunters that specifically precludes Americanization - heck, they could even retain Nikloj Coster-Waldau, who has done a fair amount of English-language work (I'm likely the last one who thinks of him as the title character in New Amsterdam rather than the guy in Game of Thrones) - the fact is, if you're doing one, you're doing it for the people who don't have the flexibility to see something with subtitles. And while the plot likely isn't going to be simplified much - it's pretty darn simple - it will probably get a string of flashbacks added to the end, and two of the most memorable action bits will likely get neutered.

But enough about that. The Revisionaries delivers some Horrible Photography:


The Revisionaries director Scott Thurman

Why yes, I was in an even-numbered screen at the Somerville; how did you guess?

Thurman came across as quite a nice guy, soft-spoken with just enough twang in his voice to indicate that he was likely able to put some of his subjects at ease by being a local as opposed to some interloper looking to make them appear foolish. He had a few interesting stories, and said that Don McLeroy wound up taking the movie over somewhat because he really does come across as the most entertaining subject on camera, a goofball whose simple conviction makes him unimaginably dangerous.

That McLeroy is pretty much exactly what he appears to be led to one of the strangest comments of the festival, that McLeroy actually liked the film and appeared with it at Tribeca. I suppose, from his point of view, the movie doesn't come off as alarmist, but shows him and his allies mostly getting what they wanted, with him as a genial everyman leading the charge. In some ways, that may be the most frightening thing about the experience - that McLeroy and others like him are not only trying to push their anachronistic, superstitious beliefs on the world, but think they come out of a movie like this looking good.

McLeroy didn't come to Boston, and while it's fun to think he would have been torn apart if he had, I don't know that we're a more dangerous audience than Tribeca. I did find the overt hostility of the audience during the documentary a bit discomfiting, though. One of the things that makes it really easy to dislike the current generation of Republicans is how rude and didactic they can be, and one doesn't expect the other side to act the same way (which has, arguably, been a weakness); hearing a bunch of people hiss and boo during a movie seems out-of-character, like both sides have now abandoned civility.

I felt a bit sorry for Thurman dealing with the audience at points; he was making a movie that they more or less agreed with, but got lefties saying he wasn't sounding the alarm loudly enough when it comes to the theocracy that the Right is trying to establish and science guys wishing he'd laid out the difference between a theory and a hypothesis better (and wondering why an anthropologist rather than a biologist was the pro-science voice we heard). I tended to gravitate toward the latter crowd, but it is in our nature to be a nit-picky group.

The political nature of the doc makes it a tricky one to review; it has some weaknesses as a film that I may be willing to overlook because I generally agree with its point of view and because it is presented in an entertaining manner. I think I'm all right at evaluating how well-made a film is rather than how well it synchronizes with my world view (I've started a few reviews with "____ is an important subject and thus deserves a better movie than ____" before), but education, and especially science education, is something I care about enough that it's very difficult for me to not phrase things in terms of "good guys" and "bad guys" and make the response to what I wrote about my personal political beliefs as opposed to the quality of the film. I don't know that I entirely managed it, but a quick look around the other reviews linked on IMDB suggests I did better than some.

The Revisionaries

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #4 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

It's easy to hear a phrase like "culture wars" and think that it's over-stating the matter; most people, most of the time, stick to their own thing, grouse that there's not more that reflects their beliefs and tastes, and leave it at that. But as The Revisionaries demonstrates, it's a very real thing, and one of the front lines is the Texas State Board of Education.

This is because the group decides on the standards that textbooks must meet in order to be used by a large population, and since publishers aren't looking to publish multiple editions, this can impact the education of children well outside their borders. As the film starts, in early 2009, the board is attempting to decide the language to be used when discussing the theory of evolution. The focus soon comes to rest upon Don McLeroy, the head of the Board, who is not an educator but a dentist, and a young-Earth creationist at that. He and fellow conservatives like Cynthia Dunbar (who is a professor at Liberty University as well as a board member) are one side of the fight, while the other side is mostly represented by lobbyists like Kathy Miller (Texas Freedom Network) and Eugenie Scott (National Center for Science Education) and witnesses like anthropology professor Ron Wetherington. McLeroy will also soon be facing a re-election campaign.

That director Scott Thurman chooses to focus on McLeroy is kind of unusual; it's fair to say that the film's sympathies lie with McLeroy's opponents, and the usual technique is to follow the heroic underdog. Then again, the "antagonist" in a documentary is seldom as gregarious and willing to grant access as this guy. There's nothing obviously shifty or deceptive about the guy, and that may be why he's so willing to have Thurman's cameras follow him - he genuinely feels that he has nothing to hide, and is so certain of his convictions that he can't understand why his opponents are so mean to him.

Full review at EFC.

Hodejegerne (Headhunters)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, 35mm)

What makes for a good thriller? There are many recipes, but it's the results that matter; the audience should spend as much time as possible excited by what's about to happen, in addition to what's going on in the moment. Headhunters does a legitimately exceptional job of that, letting the audience enjoy the roller-coaster ride its unlikely protagonist is on without playing down to anybody.

Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) is an Oslo corporate headhunter who between his expensive house, lavish gifts to wife Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund), and girlfriend Lotte (Julie Ølgaard) is living well beyond his means. He finances this lifestyle by moonlighting as an art thief, using intelligence he gleans at his day job and a partner who works for an alarm company - Ove (Eivind Sander) - to get things done quickly and quietly. At the opening of Diana's new gallery, he meets Clas Greve (Nikloj Coster-Waldau), a recent arrival from Denmark who is both perfect for a CEO job he's recruiting for and the inheritor of a piece lost since WWII - although things that look too good to be true often are.

Director Morten Tyldum and writers Lars Gudmestad & Ulf Ryberg (adapting a novel by Jo Nesbø) don't mess around with just how bad an idea stealing that painting is, or anything, really. Headhunters lays most of the information that the audience needs to know out early, and there's not a lot of it - just enough to kick off an entertaining chase. And once that's on, it's one thing after another with nary a moment for Roger or the audience to stop for breath, with the focus tightening to Roger as the movie goes on so that cut-aways don't slow things down. Even last-act revelations (which are actually pretty slick) don't require a pause to explain things.

Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.05 (Sunday 29 April 2012): Fairhaven, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Girl Model & Keyhole

This is how it starts... I know I'm not going to get a This Week In Tickets post done during the festival, but I figure the next week isn't unreasonable, and then when that week passes I'm barely done writing up February, and before you know it it's Fantasia time and I haven't done one since April...

Well, anyway, time to stop worrying and show off some horrible photography. It's a shame there wasn't a full set - at first, Guy Maddin was going to come with Keyhole, then there was talk of him doing a Skype Q&A, but when the movie ended we just all wound up going home. Sad; having his picture be a photo of a head projected on a screen with a webcam underneath and someone pointing at other people amused me. And I wanted to ask him how excited he was to have the NHL back in his town; one of the most memorable things about when he brought My Winnipeg to the festival four years ago was how thoroughly incensed he was at his hockey team being stolen away and the old arena demolished (in fact, the footage of the new one was all on video, because "it doesn't deserve film!").


Fairhaven writer/director/star Tom O'Brien & producers

As you might expect, there were a lot of people from Fairhaven, MA, here for this one, although they were much less rambunctious than the previous night's crowd for Booster, although it got off on some amusing tangents.


Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry director Alison Klayman and editor Jennifer Fineran

Another thoroughly pleasant pair. Like a lot of documentaries, many of the questions in this Q&A were about what happened to the people involved in the action after the filmmakers stopped rolling, which in this case is pretty much where they were when the film ended. One person raised her hand to mention that she was a Tufts student doing a thesis on Ai Weiwei.


Girl Model (and Downeast) filmmakers Ashley Sabin and David Redmon

I am quite frankly shocked that the pictures I had from this screening came out this well. I remember it being a little darker and Redmon always looking at the floor so that his hat blocked his entire face.

I mention as an aside in the review that I really hope that when Girl Model does get released on DVD, it's with some sort of commentary or featurette that reflects what they talked about here. Because, contrary to what you may expect after having only watched the film, the project was actually initiated by Ashley Arbaugh, who came up to them after a screening of a previous film to say she had a subject for a documentary for them, though the version she pitched hinted at prostitution and more obviously criminal behavior. Watch the film, and you're likely to wonder why Arbaugh allowed herself to be interviewed or signed a release, but hearing that this movie was in some ways her idea makes things even stranger.

You can still see traces of that initial pitch in some of her interview footage, and it does make me wonder whether the modeling agencies and the like were very careful to keep certain things out of sight. Sabin & Redmon describe Arbaugh as being about as reliable behind the scenes as she seems stable in front of it, apparently misrepresenting who the crew was, craving attention, and flat-out contradicting herself at times. It actually makes an already interesting documentary even more fascinating, but it must have been a bizarre experience to live through.

Fairhaven

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

If you're going to go through a time of self-doubt or regret, you could find worse surroundings than Fairhaven, Mass. It's got the kind of snow dirt and smoke don't seem to stick to, there are good friends there to support you, and your problems are taken seriously without being blown out of proportion.

Take, for instance, Jon (writer/director Tom O'Brien); a man in his mid-thirties, his job on a fishing boat is steady but makes it hard for him to find time to write, which is his true passion; his girlfriend Angela (Alexie Gilmore) teaches "laughter classes" and talks about open relationships in a way that sounds cool but makes him nervous. His best friend Sam (Rich Sommer) has a great daughter but hasn't really been with any one since divorcing high-school sweetheart Kate (Sarah Paulson), who has since remarried. The other guy they were close with as kids, Dave (Chris Messina), has been away for ten years but has returned for his father's funeral.

There's no terrible, hidden dysfunction underneath the surface here. Characters' issues are pretty much what they appear to be, and the secrets revealed, while not quite inconsequential, are the sort that hang over the characters uneasily rather than ominously. O'Brien seems to have a sense of proportion about things; these aren't the sort of problems that are solved with outbursts, and they're not made so for dramatic effect. A moment which a different film might milk for tension instead has the guys teasing Kate about her new husband being older man, for example, a certain manifestation of Jon's insecurity also manages to serve as a running joke.


Full review at EFC.

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #3 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is an odd duck, even by installation-artist standards. That it's often an affable, upbeat eccentricity may help explain why a government not known for free expression let the outspoken Ai be for so long (along with his international renown). Such an artist in such a situation can't avoid trouble forever, but the type he winds up making tends to be interesting.

The movie opens innocently enough, with Ai in his Beijing home/studio, supervising the fabrication of pieces meant for upcoming shows, talking about art in a broad sense and telling the audience how one of the dozens of cats that share his space can open doors. And while some of his more obviously confrontational pieces (like a "perspective study" photograph of his middle finger and Tienanmen Square) and stances (helping design the "birds' nest" for the Beijing Olympics and then boycotting the games) don't seem to draw a reaction, a seemingly much more innocuous project - documenting the children who died in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake - gets his popular blog shut down. Ai takes his message to Twitter, but...

It may initially seem like an odd thing for the People's Republic to go to the wall over, both because Ai's actions seem far more humanitarian than political, and because, well, why make civilian casualties of a natural disaster a state secret? As the film points out, there is an underlying cause aside from random tragedy - shoddy construction materials used in many of the area's schools - but both artist and filmmaker are humane enough to not try and score obvious political points from dead children. There's a connection be made between schools literally collapsing and Ai Weiwei's comments about Chinese art schools not teaching artists what they need to know, but director Alison Klayman doesn't push that (if it's even intended). If anything, the intent seems to be to show that Ai's activism springs from concern about his people rather than his government.


Full review at EFC.

Girl Model

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #3 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

When one sees a documentary with a title like "Girl Model" on a festival schedule, it's probably not a bad idea to schedule a little time between it and the next film to wash a bit of the scummy feeling off. What's particularly interesting about this one is that it is that sort of uneasy-making movie without a doubt, but it also presents a bit more complex than just exploitation. Girl Model is not ambiguous, but still capable of leaving the audience unsure about what it has seen.

We start in Siberia - Novosibersk, to be precise - where model scout Ashley Arbaugh is looking for some fresh faces for an agency in Japan. Out of a large crowd assembled by NOAH Models (which has the local market cornered), Ashley chooses Nadya Vall, a willowy thirteen-year-old who has the agency employing Ashley craves. Nadya goes off to Japan alone, despite not speaking Japanese or even English, and Ashley heads back home to Connecticut.

It's not long before filmmakers Ashley Sabin & David Redmon reveal that Arbaugh also modeled in Japan in her teen years, and one hopes that we're not watching history repeat itself. Nadya is a sweet kid who probably thought that she was going to be the plucky heroine in a rags-to-riches fairy tale, and while the audience doesn't witness much in the way of active malice, loneliness and confusion soon take their toll. Redmon & Sabin are pretty hands-off with Nadya and her roommate Madlen, getting a little background information from those around the young Russian girls without doing much to diminish the audience's sense of just how strange this must seem.


Full review at EFC.

Keyhole

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #5 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Winnipeg-based director Guy Maddin has never been anything less than unconventional, but some of his more recent efforts have met the mainstream halfway; they were peculiar films but the audience didn't have to take up residence in Maddin's head to understand them. Despite having a few actors that the audience will recognize at the top of the cast, Keyhole is half a step back toward strange, but manages to be more intriguing than confusing.

The cops have got gangster Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) and his gang on the run, eventually cornering them in his mansion. It's a terrible place to make a last stand, but escape seems to be far from Ulysses's mind; he means to find his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini), who has shut herself in her bedroom since the death of most of their children. That sounds like it should not be difficult, but Ulysses's memory isn't working quite right, and he's relying on a young woman (Brooke Palsson) to show him the way, but she seems both psychic and disoriented, likely as a result of her recent drowning.

That will throw a person, but the lines separating life and death are different in Keyhole's world. The mansion is filled with ghosts, and after the shootout ends, Ulysses asks those who have died to step outside, so that the police can get them to the morgue. Maddin and co-writer George Toles don't specify the rigid rules of a fantasy universe here; while not every interaction between the living and the dead is weighty and symbolic (some are just crude jokes), the basic idea seems to be that death and loss can be handled in many different ways. Sometimes, the survivors can seem more like ghosts than the departed.

Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.04 (Saturday 28 April 2012): Time Zero, Knuckleball!, Think of Me, and Booster

I planned for this to be the crazy marathon day and maybe the fact that it wasn't that kind of gauntlet wound up being for the best - watching six films doesn't sound like a whole lot more "work" than four, but running from one theater to another means not eating real food, keeping one part of the brain running hot while the rest idles, with little exercise... It's surprisingly grinding.

But let's get started with the first opportunity for Horrible Photography:



I appreciate the bow tie. It's snazzy, and I do like it when filmmakers dress up a bit for their film to play a festival. I'm going to have to buy a new suit for my cousin's wedding this June because I left my only suit in a hotel room of the last wedding I went to (several summers ago), so it's not like I feel they should be worn often, but guys - you're doing something special and representing not just your own work, but that of your cast and crew - shave and look nice!

I must admit, though, that though I mostly liked Time Zero, a fairly prevalent theme in the first half hour or so rubbed me the wrong way. As much as I dig the way these cameras create "instant artifacts", the pity for the poor kids who won't grow up with shoeboxes full of Polaroids is just kind of annoyingly myopic - both in how horrible it is that the next generation won't have the exact same childhood we did any more than our exactly replicated our forebears' (where's the wailing over the loss of the daguerreotype? You had to sit for twenty minutes and there's silver in it, so it's even more precious than your pre-digital photographs!) and how laughable the notion that today's kids won't have the same level of access to memories because of it. To be honest, I suspect that they'll have rather the opposite problem - it's not like my brothers are taking baby pictures down from Facebook and Instagram as their daughters grow older!

Despite that, I did enjoy the movie. I do wish it had started on time - it was delayed about a half hour to accommodate a 1pm (rather than 12:30pm) showtime that somehow got spread, which meant that by the time it was done, there was no way I was getting to Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. Too bad, it might have been fun to do back-to-back reviews of movies about instant photography and highly time-consuming and involved photography.



There were a lot of other chances to double up on movies this year, though: Two Detroit docs, two photography docs, two Chinese activist docs, two with Lauren Ambrose (see below), quite a few musician docs... and two baseball documentaries. I liked both, although in some ways Knuckleball! had a more immediate connection, as I was at a game or two featured in the movie (feel free to page through "This Week In Tickets" posts to figure out which ones)... although we weren't really celebrating the knuckler as the quest for 200 wins dragged on.

I won't be doing a full review of this one right away, as it's got weird embargo rules - no reviews until its Boston opening, although the Q&A implied it would be going straight to DVD and the MLB Network, with maybe a special event screening or two this summer (likely with Tim Wakefield present). And embargo without an embargo date is just weird on top of the usual "since I was given a press pass to represent EFC, I can't post about it, but if I'd bought my own ticket and not known about the embargo, it would be fair game, even though I'd write the same 6-8 paragraphs" that goes hand-in-hand with festival-related embargoes.

That said, I kind of get why there's not a real major release planned - I'm not sure how this plays to an audience that's not full of Red Sox or Mets fans. Your team vs. ballplayers in general is the difference between there being all-out cheering during the baseball footage in the movie or just polite attention.



Think of Me - pretty good movie, nice director, with a fair amount of talk about which elements were autobiographical. I probably could have made it to the Brattle and back for 2 Days in New York with Julie Delpy doing a Q&A instead, but the Red Line was unpredictable this weekend, and, besides, that will be getting a release and I don't know about Think of Me.



Not pictured - Adam Roffman taking control of the Q&A so that the lady behind me didn't ruin it. Not that her being a really annoying disruption was entirely her fault - I heard her assuring the people sitting next to her that she wasn't high but had a neurological issue. My initial reaction was "suuuuuure!", but I think even people who aren't all there will generally notice that they're the only one not being cool and dial it back, but she had this overreaction to everything that really got uncomfortable after a while. Then, during the Q&A, she stood up and thanked the filmmakers for acknowledging that everything in Boston has to go through the Asian Mob first (what?). Pretty soon the Q&A became sort of rapid fire, as Adam was pointing to the next person immediately after each question was answered so there wouldn't be a space where people could insert themselves.

Kind of a shame that the session really couldn't be relaxed, because director Matt Ruskin and stars Nico Stone and Adam DuPaul were likable folks with great stories of shooting a movie in Boston with no money but a ton of passion, and there were a lot of local folks there.

It still went on long enough for me to miss Beyond the Black Rainbow at the Brattle, but that's okay - it's on the new calendar and I was dragging, and while I want to give it another look, it did have me drifting during the afternoon when I saw it at Fantasia; who knows how much I could have handled at 11:30pm!

Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Instant photography is pretty darn cool, both as concept and technology, and most of the core audience for Time Zero: The Last Year of Polaroid Film probably already feels that rather strongly. The rest of the people who might watch it also aren't likely to need a whole lot of convincing. It's a bit less than ideal, then, that director Grant Hamilton spends so much of the film on saying so, because there is much more interesting material to come.

As many of the photographers and enthusiasts interviewed for the film lament, younger people might not recognize that Polaroid was until recently not just a generic electronics & imaging brand, but one synonymous with self-developing film and the collapsible cameras that took those pictures. In February of 2008, they quietly let it be known that they would be ending production of their signature product, leading to initial despair and then an audacious plan to purchase a Polaroid facility in the Netherlands and produce new instant film within a year - a plan so unlikely that it was called "The Impossible Project".

The Impossible Project changed the nature of Time Zero; what started as a eulogy suddenly had the potential for an actual story with a triumphant conclusion of sorts. Without that, it seems likely that the length of a short would have been better-suited to this topic than that of a feature; the opening half hour that focuses on the upcoming end of an era already contains a fair amount of repetition and filler - as peculiar as the guy described as Polaroid inventor/founder Edwin Land's bodyguard is, including him really brings nothing to the movie.

Full review at EFC.


Knuckleball!

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

A lot of reviews of sports movies will start out with the writer saying something like "Knuckleball! isn't really about baseball", but let's be honest: Knuckleball! is about baseball. Following R.A. Dickey and Tim Wakefield and their peculiar pitch is about as baseball-specific as you can get, and while you can find a more general message (say, that it's possible to thrive even if you do things a different way), that's in part because we humans are built to search for that sort of relevance. There's still a lot of baseball.

And that's cool, because baseball is fantastic, and directors Ricki Stern & Anne Sundberg shoot the game nicely, using the knuckler's unnatural sort of motion as both transition and punctuation. They've got a pair of genial main subjects in Wakefield and Dickey, along with access to plenty of other colorful characters filling out the fraternity of knuckleball pitchers.

I'll recommend Knuckleball! to people when I can post a real review, but it's made for a niche audience, no question. Baseball is in the foreground here, and players on northeastern teams in particular. You've got to be down for that, although those who are will find it pretty entertaining.


Think of Me

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #5 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Lauren Ambrose has been building a solid body of work since her teens, mostly as part of quality ensembles. Here she's got a lead role, and while it's not likely to be the one that makes her a household name - the movie's too small and the character's not an obvious heroine - it certainly doesn't bring her average down. And though she's in every scene, she's far from alone in delivering the goods here.

She plays Angela, a single mother in the less flashy part of Las Vegas whose call-center job just barely makes ends meet. Her daughter Sunny (Audrey Scott) is just about to turn eight and is falling behind the other students in her class with a possible reading disability. At work, she commiserates with Max (Dylan Baker), the guy in the next cube, and learns of an investment opportunity from her boss (David Conrad). It's not the kind that sets one up for life but it would give her a bit of a cushion. Of course, she's not the type for whom this sort of thing goes smoothly.

Yes, Angela is more than a bit of a screw-up, but she's a walking disaster as the movie begins rather than a crashing one, and not completely unsympathetic. We're not given much of a sense of what her circumstances were like when Sunny was born, but somehow she's managed to get this far without everything falling apart. Writer Bryan Wizemann presents her as someone who has made grudging, minimal concessions to being a responsible adult and parent - she knows she has to have a job, but also blows it off very easily when she doesn't feel like working. She's dressed like someone who can afford to be a lot more carefree and provocative, for that matter.

Full review at EFC.


Booster

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Booster doesn't do a whole lot; it could almost survive with its plot removed. It's the sort of independent film that comes across as authentic to those from its neighborhood and has a sharp enough read on its characters to work for those outside. Filmmaker Matt Ruskin doesn't have the resources for a lot of criminal activity, but observes well enough to make up for it.

Simon (Nico Stone) is a shoplifter who has honed his craft well; he can boost items large and small without getting caught, even if they've got an anti-theft tag on them, and while the operation is small - his friend Paul (Adam DuPaul) gives him a "shopping list" and moves the results - it works. To be fair, he is spotted lifting some perfume by a girl that works at the drug store, but Megan (Kristin Dougherty) winds up more interested in getting to know him than reporting him. The trouble is, Simon's brother Sean (Brian McGrail) tends to go for bigger game and has been pinched for armed robbery. He's looking at a long stretch unless Simon pulls a few jobs with the same M.O.

Though there are scenes of Simon casing shops and crime is a part of nearly every conversation, even in a nursing home, Booster is not a caper story with a lot of complex moving parts. Neither brother is pulling especially elaborate jobs, to the extent that Simon lining a bag with aluminum foil to fool anti-theft devices is about as tricky a plan as these guys go in for. There are occasional reminders that Simon had better get started robbing laundromats if he doesn't want his brother to go to jail, but they could almost be notes to the writer/director - didn't he sell this to us as a crime film?

Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.03 (Friday 27 April 2012): Burn and V/H/S

This Week in Tickets will be taking this week off for a double-shot next week. After all...



... those dates plus the two days at the Coolidge straddle a weekend on the calendar pretty evenly, so it makes sense to let them run together.

As to Friday specifically... In retrospect, this probably should have been the Detroit double feature I'd had as one of the options when sketching out my schedule, and maybe if I weren't attending on a press pass I'd have done that. But while I'm usually pretty good at keeping similar movies seen at festivals separate, I was concerned with Burn and Detropia bleeding together by the time I wrote about them. But, I'd heard nothing but good things about V/H/S from the Austin contingent of Twitter and the picture IFFBoston used for Detropia in the program and slides had a sort of forced eccentricity to it I didn't dig.

Speaking of photos...


Directors Brenna Sanchez & Tom Putnam; executive producers Jim Serpico & Dennis Leary.

Leary came out solo to do an introduction before the movie, but the first thing he did was go at the guy from FilmFestivals.com in front of me "is that a motherf---ing tripod? Are you motherf---ing taping this you f---ing pirate motherf---er?" (paraphrased, with the number of cuss-words reduced). No way on Earth I was pulling out my camera to get a few quick snaps after that.

It was a pretty good Q&A; a lot of folks asked questions about the Detroit FD instead of the movie, but the filmmakers handled it all right. Some of the questions about the movie itself were actually fairly interesting - one connection I wouldn't necessarily have made was that Putnam, at least, had a background directing extreme sports events, which turns out to be a good training ground for directing this sort of documentary. Both involve riding herd over a bunch of cameras capturing the same event, getting them to stay out of each other's way while capturing everything, because there's no retakes for a burning building. Also, if there were actually film involved in capturing and projecting this, they would probably be saying it was still wet (we need a new idiom for the digital age), as the final cut was locked not long before they showed at Tribeca the week before. They won the audience award there, and Leary was campaigning to get two in two weeks.

So, I passed on Detropia and headed a few steps down the Red Line to the Brattle for V/H/S. Sadly, the most entertaining part of that was probably Ned Hinkle's introduction, because he still seemed to be shell-shocked from dealing with the audience for the other movie that played there that evening. It was kind of the perfect storm - locally shot flicks bring a more rambunctious audience to film festivals, and the audience for music docs tends to reflect the musicians' fans, so when playing a movie called All Ages: The Boston Hardcore Film... Well, I wasn't surprised to see it clearing out about an hour after when you might expect from the start time and length.

Or that the staff seemed kind of frazzled.

Burn

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

It's sad to say but true - Detroit has been known for its fires for a long time, and the recent economic tumult which has hit the Motor City especially hard has not slowed that activity down in the least. Burn doesn't sugar-coat what a difficult task the city's firefighters are faced with, but does a fine job of not painting it as hopeless.

The statistics it presents at various points are staggering - though Detroit was a city of 1.8 million in 1950, that population has shrunk to 713,000. As a result, there were 80,000 abandoned buildings when Burn began filming in early 2011. As the number of fires has trended upward, the number of firefighters has stayed roughly the same. A staggering percentage of building fires are arson, because as one veteran puts it, a gallon of gasoline still costs less than a movie ticket. These and other numbers are spread throughout the movie rather than presented as a large chunk of data, but each still has its effect, making sure that the audience grasps the enormity of the situation. The film's subtitle - "One Year on the Front Lines of the Battle to Save Detroit" - does not seem like hyperbole.

If this is a war, then directors Brenna Sanchez and Tom Putnam are embedded in Engine Company 50, located in the city's East End. The filmmakers do a good job of introducing the audience to the company as a whole to the extent that they can, although an 80-minute movie doesn't give them enough time to go in-depth with everybody. In fact, as it turns out, only one of the three men whom the film focuses on is stationed there. That's Dave Parnell, a Field Engine Operator with over thirty years of service planning to retire and travel with his wife. Brendan "Doog" Milewski used to work there, but was paralyzed on the job the previous year; we follow his rehabilitation and grappling with a life that has strayed far from his plans for it. Time is also devoted to Donald Austin, the newly-appointed Fire Commissioner who, while Detroit-born, is seen as a suit-wearing outsider from Los Angeles by the rank and file.


Full review at EFC.

V/H/S

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2012 in the Brattle Theatre #3 (Independent Film Festival Boston After Dark 2012, digital)

V/H/S is an anthology film with six segments (including the spine), each of which is the product of up-and-coming independent [horror] directors, and each of which makes an attempt to do something interesting with the "found footage" conceit. For a horror movie, it's pretty long, at almost two hours. There should be a lot to say about it, but I find that my thoughts keep getting boiled down to two words: "not scary".

That's not necessarily completely damning; it is on occasion many of the other fine things this sort of movie can be: Funny, gory, surprising, weird, and even exciting. After all, there is a fair amount of talent working on the movie, so it's not likely to be a bore all the way through. Still, what every good horror story has at its center is something genuinely unsettling, and none of the segments have much to offer besides a fairly well-worn story being told using a device that is by now well-worn and which actually obscures the good stuff.

Take Ti West's "Second Honeymoon"; West is pretty great at doing a slow burn with characters whom the audience can get behind, and having Joe Swanberg and Sophia Takal in front of the camera is a great boon for that sort of picture. They're tremendously undercut by the format, though - the found-footage conceit means that things stop recording just as it's getting exciting, and that climactic moment is blurry and hard to follow. It's a lot of build-up for nothing. "Tuesday the 17th" by Glenn McQuaid is similar; it's got an amiable cast In Jason Yachanin, Normal Carroll, Jeannie Yoder, and Drew Moerlein, but even though McQuaid does his damnedest to put a distinct spin on the monster in the woods, it's so familiar that most will just acknowledge the quality of its gore effects without being much shaken by them.

Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.02 (Thursday 26 April 2012): Pelotero and The Imposter

The anecdote in the first paragraph of the Pelotero review is the truth; I was going to give the movie a pass because I've seen enough other baseball movies on similar subjects that I didn't necessarily feel the need to see another until Brian Tamm basically said "you're not seeing the baseball movie? C'mon, Polisse is going to play the Kendall!"

So I saw it. Heck, it's a better recommendation than what I was toying with earlier - having people tweet to me and @eFilmCritic what I should see an making the best schedule I can from the winners. If I can get our follower counts up for next year and have the same sort of "well, it all looks good" feelings about the schedule, maybe I'll try it then.

In the meantime, have some horrible photography:

Ross Finkel, Trevor Martin, and Jon Paley

Interesting Q&A, at times. There was one older lady who accused the directors of making an exploitation film, although I'm not sure how you can look at this and think it was on MLB's side - while I admit that it could have been much harsher toward the organization, I think it makes very clear how MLB rigs the system in their favor and even then tries to take further advantage.

Most seemed to like it, though, and the directors implied that they had gotten some distribution, and would likely play at the Coolidge in July.

It wound up making an interesting double feature with The Imposter (hey, Indomina, would you mind correcting the spelling of "Impostor" before releasing it, even if you're going to book it in places that call themselves "Theatres"?); both wound up with themes of identity theft and presenting yourself as younger than you are. The Imposter was the slicker production, but oddly omitted the big question of why Frédéric Bourdin did this at all never backed out when he saw the mess he was in. The obvious answer, that he's mentally ill or compulsive in some way, will have to suffice, but it's not nearly as solid as the economic reasons displayed in Pelotero.

Pelotero

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #4 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

I've already seen and reviewed a couple of movies about Dominican ballplayers trying to make the American major leagues - one fairly decent documentary (Rumbo a Las Grandes Ligas) and one feature (the excellent Sugar) - so I nearly passed on this one until a festival director reminded me that my first choice would have a regular theatrical run soon enough and, you know, baseball! And I'm glad; Pelotero ("Ballplayer") got lucky where its subjects are concerned, but the filmmakers still deserve credit for piecing it together so well.

Jean Carlos Batista and Miguel Angel Sano were, when Pelotero was filmed in 2009, two Dominican teenagers who play shortstop and practice with neighboring trainers. Jean Carlos works with Astin Jacobo and is a solid, hard-working prospect, while Miguel Angel works with "Moreno" Tejada, and is such a cocky natural talent that he's known as Bocaton ("big mouth") and widely expected to garner the highest signing bonus a Dominican player has ever received. That is, if Major League Baseball's investigators can be convinced that he will only be celebrating his sixteenth birthday in the months leading up to the July 2nd signing day.

This is not an idle concern; not only is Sano a big guy with an advanced skill set, but many Dominican prospects have been caught lying about their age or, when that became harder to do as the United States implemented more stringent immigration controls, assuming others' identities. We are told that 20% of all professional baseball players come from the Dominican Republic despite the island having a population just 2% the size of that of the U.S., but even considering that, the vast majority of these teenagers will go unsigned; the difference between dropping out of school to concentrate on baseball full-time for nothing and receiving a life-changing bonus can be razor-thin. Even discounting the prospect of fraud, these kids and everyone around them are highly motivated.

Full review at EFC.

The Imposter

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #3 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

The very title of The Imposter seems like it might be giving the game away, but it's not hard to argue that this is entirely appropriate. Director Bart Layton opts to make the film a mystery only after all the facts have seemingly been laid out, and often seems to seek out the shaky ground when presenting those. This documentary politely rebuffs clarity as others strive for it; combine that with stylish production and you get an often-fascinating feature.

On the 13th of June in 1994, 13-year-old Nicolas Barclay vanished less than two miles from his home in San Antonio, Texas. As missing-child cases go, it wasn't unusual - many go unsolved if there is no break in the early hours - but it took a strange turn in October of 1997, when a young man found in Linares, Spain claimed to be the missing boy. He was not - where Nicolas was blond-haired and blue-eyed, this 23-year-old Frenchman was neither and spoke with a noticeable accent - but it's hard to blame a family that has lost a child for wanting to believe.

That this man cannot be Nicolas is made quite clear from the beginning, but what Layton sacrifices in suspense by making that explicit is more than compensated for by how this knowledge combined with the time that elapsed between the actual events and the making of the film colors audience perception of the interview segments. There's a subtle difference to how Frédéric Bourdin (the imposter of the title) is handled - he seems to be telling a story rather than answering unheard questions, and has variations in camera angle compared to others who get a single, straight-on setup - that hint that he is not just one of several interview subjects, but a narrator and protagonist. Laytonalso seems to spend much of the movie selecting interview footage that suggests that even over a dozen years later Nicolas's family still thinks of the months when Bourdin impersonated Nicolas with some strange fondness.

Full review at EFC.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.01 (Wednesday 25 April 2012): Sleepwalk with Me

Picked my press pass up on the way from work Monday, got out of work with plenty of time to spare on Wednesday, and saw (most of) the usual suspects doing their thing while waiting in line. Still, there just seemed to be something missing...



THEREMIN! I mean, how can you call it a party until someone is making music by waving their hands through an invisible electromagnetic field?



Seriously, I love Jon Bernhardt's stone-faced-even-when-going-nuts performance on this unique instrument. There was a bit of an awkward pause as he got to the end of his set list before the festival crew was ready to really get things started - but soon enough door prizes were being thrown at the audience and it was time for the movie to start, then finish, and make way for a Q&A.


Megna Chakrabarti & Ira Glass

I'm not a big listener to NPR; my exposure to the radio is basically (1) Red Sox games and (2) the brief moments of talk radio that my alarm clock plays to motivate me to get up, cross the room, and turn it off. After all, it's not like I've got a car, and do people listen the radio anywhere else? I kind of suspect I wouldn't be a big fan of Glass anyway, because I kind of found him annoying during the Q&A. A funny guy at times, but sometimes a person in one of these things will have a set of things he wants to say and he'll do that rather than respond to questions directly. He also had this thing where he would interrupt the audience member to repeat his question to the rest of the audience, and then go off on a tangent even before the question was finished. Good information, but weird presentation.

Also - it doesn't affect me that much as a guy with a pass, but it always amazes me how the first show of the festival, the only thing in that theater at all, can wind up delayed 35 minutes before introductions even start, but the rest of the festival when they've got five films running at once can run relatively smoothly. If I were buying tickets to individual shows, opening night would have me in sheer panic about getting to see the rest.

Sleepwalk with Me

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, digital)

Sleepwalk with Me may not have a large built-in audience, but fans of writer/director/star Mike Birbiglia and the National Public Radio segments from which this movie evolved may be the exact right niche for an independent film like this to have; who's going to be more aware of its existence or ready to see it in theaters? They likely won't be disappointed by how it translates to the big screen, and the good news is that it's both funny and substantial enough to appeal to a larger audience.

Matt (Birbiglia) and Abby (Lauren Ambrose) have been dating for eight years, since meeting in college, and in that time they haven't exactly wound up where they expected: Matt aspires to be a comedian but is still tending bar; Abby is a vocal coach instead of a rock star. Still, they're pretty comfortable after moving into a new place together, at least until Mike's sister gets engaged and everyone, especially his parents (James Rebhorn & Carol Kane) starts asking when they'll finally tie the knot. That he starts sleepwalking right about then probably isn't a great sign.

Birbiglia has been honing this autobiographical material for a while, presenting it as part of his act, stories on NPR's "This American Life", and as a one-man show. There are plenty of remnants of those other media in the finished product, as Birbiglia tends to address his audience directly; he opens and closes the movie with Matt in a car, addressing the audience as if they're sitting in the passenger seat, jumping back there on occasion for an aside or a little bit of explanation. Sometimes this narration can seem a little on the nose (following "that's my mom, she does this" with his mom doing that), but telling stories is the thing that Birbiglia does well, and it would almost be wasteful to insist that someone with that sort of skill limit himself to just acting as if the camera wasn't there.

Full review at EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 April 2012 - 22 April 2012

It's a relatively quiet weekend, almost as if Hollywood knows not to saturate Boston with movies because the big event for local movie enthusiasts starts next week.

• That event, of course, is Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, which kicks off Wednesday at the Somerville Theatre with Sleepwalk With Me, Mike Birbiglia's adaptation of his "This American Life" segments. The festival will continue through May 2nd at various venues, including all five screens at Somerville on Thursday.
  
  (Don't confuse it with the Boston International Film Festival, which runs through the 22nd at AMC Boston Common. Two completely different things.)



• The Coolidge will be host to the last couple of days of the festival in May, but in the meantime they have two new films in the big rooms. Bully opens a bit late, but they're also opening Damsels in Distress, the long-awaited fourth film by director Whit Stillman. This time around, Greta Gerwig, Analeigh Tipton, Megalyn Echikunwoke and Carrie MacLemore are college students running a suicide prevention program with unusual methods.
  
  They will have an IFFBoston preview of sorts on Sunday at 10am, when the Talk Cinema screening is Hirokazu Koreeda's I Wish, with the renowned director tackling the story of a family going through a divorce the leaves the two young sons living in separate households. There are also a pair of special screenings on Wednesday night - Documentary From Place to Place, presented by the Massachusetts Chapter of Foster Care Alumni of America, and thriller Claustropbia, presented with open captions by the Deaf & Hard of Hearing Film Club with director Harlan Schneider attending. And it's apparently too late to get tickets, but all four (!) midnight shows of The Room with writer/director/star Tommy Wiseau and co-star Greg Sestero hosting on Friday and Saturday have been sold out.



• Damsels also opens at the Landmark theaters in Kendall Square and Watertown. In addition, Kendall Square is also getting the quite excellent Monsieur Lazhar, which has an old-fashioned Algerian immigrant taking over a class in a Montreal elementary school after its teacher dies in horrifying fashion. There's also Marley, a documentary on the legendary reggae musician, and The Fairy, a Belgian comedy about a mild-mannered hotel clerk who meets a funky young lady who claims she can grant him three wishes (it's the one-week booking).



• The multiplexes for the most part take a break from action/effects-oriented fare this week. Think Like a Man (playing at Fresh Pond, Fenway, and Boston Common) springs from comedian Steve Harvey's best-selling relationship book, with four friends finding themselves having to raise their game once their girlfriends have started taking Harvey's advice to heart (because not playing games just isn't an option!). The Lucky One (playing at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square, Boston Common, and Fenway) is the latest Nicolas Sparks adaptation, with Zac Efron as a soldier returning stateside seeking the girl in a photograph that served as a lucky charm in Iraq.
  
  Earth Day falls this week, so Disney pulls out its annual nature documentary. Chimpanzee follows a young primate who gets separated from his family group and adopted by an older male. It plays the Capitol, Fenway, and Boston Common. Boston Common also opens Hong Kong's A Simple Life, which was their submission to the Oscars, not making the final cut but picking up other awards along the way. It stars Deannie Yip as a former maid who retires to move into an old folks' home after a stroke, with Andy Lau as the son of the family she worked for who looks out for her.



• Another release likely tied to Earth day is "To The Arctic", an IMAX documentary that opens at both the New England Aquarium (in 3-D) and the Museum of Science (projected on the spherical "OMNIMAX" screen). It follows a family of polar bears about the frozen (but changing) north. Meryl Streep narrates the 40-minute featurette, which plays alongside "Tornado Alley' and "Dolphins" at the Museum of Science and "Born to Be Wild", "Under the Sea", and "Deep Sea 3D" at the Aquarium for those looking for a double feature of amazing large-format photography.



• I'm a bit surprised the Brattle has been closed for much of school vacation week rather than extending the Muppet Madness series that kicks off on Friday back to last Monday. It runs this weekend, with new entry The Muppets playing Friday and Saturday, running as a double feature with a sing-along screening of The Muppet Movie on Friday and Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey on Saturday. Sunday is a triple feature of the original movies made by Jim Henson - The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan - while Monday features his funky fantasies, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.
  
  Special events fill the rest of the week. The Balagan screening on Tuesday the 24th, The Castle (Il Castello), seems rather conventional for them, as directors Massimo D'Anolfi and Martina Parenti (attending in person) take their cameras inside the operations of Milan's airport to show the overwhelming challenges and post-9/11 bureaucracy that face the staff. The "Wordless Wednesday" screening is 1930's City Girl, F.W. Murnau's follow-up to Sunshine (originally scheduled, but delayed until next month), which has a farmer meeting and marrying the title character, who may not adapt so well to the country. Thursday night features the short documentary film "A Civil Remedy", about a girl who escaped from sex traffickers, and will be followed by a panel discussion with journalists and filmmakers working on sex trafficking stories.



• ArtsEmerson's "Gotta Dance" program has a big entry this weekend, with Gene Kelly as An American in Paris. That classic Vincente Minnelli musical plays Friday evening (when it is introduced by Minnelli biographer Mark Griffin) and Saturday & Sunday afternoons, in a spiffy restoration 35mm print. Saturday evening features a pair of restored 16mm prints: "Print Generation", in which one minute of footage is presented fifty times, with the film processed differently in each; and "Notes for Jerome", a forty-five minute tribute to Jerome Hill.



• The MFA continues Jewishfilm.2012: The National Center for Jewish Film's Festival, with The Policeman, Never Forget to Lie, How to Re-establish a Vodka Empire, a program of Max Davidson silent comedy shorts from the 1920s, My Australia, Women Unchained, and Punk Jews.



• The Harvard Film Archive begins Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Cinema Novo and Beyond, a program spotlighting one of Brazil's most noted filmmakers. Friday features Barren Lives and Who Is Beta?; Saturday's films are Golden Mouth and Rio, 100 Degrees; then the program takes a week off.
  
  There's a repeat screening of William Kentridge's animated films on Sunday at 5pm, though the director will not be in attendance as he was last week. The husband-and-wife team of Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán will be present for the 7pm show that day, Jean Gentil, which follows an unemployed Haitian accountant deeper into the jungle. Monday evening, they move out of the main screening room for Anthony McCall's installation film Line Describing a Cone, which makes the projection beam of light itself part of the presentation.



• The Bollywood film opening at Fresh Pond this week is Vicky Donor, which features Ayushmann Khurrana as a prolific sperm donor at a New Delhi clinic, which inevitably complicates things when he meets a pretty girl played by Yami Gautam. It mostly runs evenings, with the held-over Houseful 2 continuing to have matinee showings.



• Sing-Along Grease wraps up its run at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on Friday and Sunday, with Friday night's show featuring a "Live Shadow Cast" leading the audience.

My plans? A Simple Life on Friday, I Wish and Damsels in Distress on Sunday, and maybe "To The Arctic" in between. With IFFBoston coming up on Wednesday, I'd probably better catch The Fairy and catch up on some other stuff early. You guys should all get to Monsieur Lazhar before joining me in Somerville on Wednesday and Thursday.

(Taking my nieces to the Brattle's Muppet stuff while my brother and sister-in-law are at a concert and after-party would be cool, but they'll probably be at their grandparents' instead.)