This Those Weeks in Tickets: 15 April 2019 - 5 May 2019

Just posted the pages for BUFF, so obviously the ones which include IFFBoston 2019 are next.







This three-week period actually started off with heading out to another series, the Belmont World Film Festival, for Asako I & II on Monday, 25 April. It's a neat little movie in a neat little series (at a venue I kind of dig), although in some ways the thing I remember most is the guest talking about how it was weird, leading me to think that my idea of Japanese films being weird must be awful skewed, because this was barely odd. Or, alternately, she needed to see the anniversary screenings of Audition at the Brattle that weekend.

I didn't; instead, my next bit of Japanese film was finally making it through Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind on Saturday, as the Harvard Film Archive had a subtitled 35mm print for one of their family matinees. Good, obviously, and I just hadn't seen it at the right time before. A much better choice than the thoroughly ill-considered new version of Hellboy than I saw later that evening.

The next evening, I would head to the Kendall for a split double feature of Little Woods and Wild Nights with Emily, liking them both, although the latter is the one that probably sticks in my head more, just because it is so unrelentingly odd and peculiar even as it is kind of ruthless in getting what it was going for across.

That was a good warm-up for IFFBoston, where did a (mostly) full schedule:

• 24 April 2019: Luce
• 25 April 2019: Them That Follow and The Death of Dick Long
• 26 April 2019: Pizza: A Love Story and Not for Resale
• 27 April 2019: We Are Not Princesses, Ms. Purple, When Lambs Become Lions, and In Fabric
• 28 April 2019: One Child Nation, The Pollinators, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, and For the Birds
• 29 April 2019: Shorts Exeter and The Rusalka
• 1 May 2019: The Farewell

Posts for those were all over the place as I tried to finish writing BUFF up first but bumped things to the front of the line as they got released. And, yes, I did kind of wind up taking a day off, mostly because I got held up on the MBTA and sometime around Charles, I knew that I would not make it to the Coolidge in time for The Sound of Silence and decided to get off, watch Avengers: Endgame in 3D, and figure that the stuff that plays the Tuesday night shows at the Coolidge usually wind up getting regular releases anyway. Sadly, this turned out not to be the case for either movie playing there that night, but I'd at least get to see The Art of Self-Defense at Fantasia.

It's enough to make you want to do something else for a few days, but there's new stuff every week, and I hit Always Miss You and Savage on the weekend, even if they weren't exactly the two Chinese films I'd been hoping would open in Boston that weekend. Neither were particularly great, but there's at least something interesting in Savage that could have been really good but for the inevitable censorship.

I wasn't going to see them on back-to-back days, but getting out to Danvers to see Bolden is a tricky four-legged process if you use public transportation, so I had to divert on Saturday before finally making it on Sunday. On the one hand, not exactly a good enough movie to be worth that sort of day-eating effort; on the other, I'd been waiting almost nine years to see the dang thing after having it teased at the Apollo Theater in 2010, so I wasn't going to miss it on the one chance I had to see it on the big screen.

As you can see, it's especially important to follow my Letterboxd page during festivals, because they will just take forever to write up.

Kaze no tani no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 April 2019 in the Harvard Film Archive (Weekend Matinee, subtitled 35mm)

Does it count as a rewatch if I've put the disc in the player two or three times and then nodded off before it was done? I swear, I've chosen the worst times to try and watch this movie before jumping all over the HFA's subtitled 35mm matinee.

Obviously, I should have seen this sooner; it's a downright terrific movie which establishes its science-fiction bona fides from the opening frames and is grounded in Miyazaki's particular environmental take on the genre throughout. Miyazaki draws no line between world-building and adventure, and sketches out a larger world casually, without ever losing his focus on the title character and her village.

It's obviously an early work - the animation is a little rough at points, the villains are sometimes a little too casually sketched, and there were more than a few comments from the audience about how much of Nausicaä's bottom we were seeing. It's almost never less than intriguing, though, and I likely would have been astounded if it had played Portland, ME/been a thing my parents would have brought me to when I was 11. It still seems like an insane practically out-of-nowhere achievement, and I'm mildly curious to know whether a shot early in the movie of Nausicaä walking to the forest from her glider inspired an iconic image from Akira, vice versa, or if they were pulling from the same source.

Avengers: Endgame

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 April 2019 in AMC Boston Common #8 (first-run, RealD 3D DCP)

Funny how the better part of a year gives me an odd perspective on this particular movie - maybe no longer so keenly caught up in the hype to praise it as effusively as I did back in May, but also keenly aware of how Disney's Star Wars guys didn't quite stick the landing to their grand saga the way the Marvel team did. It is, as I figured after a second screening, one of the most satisfying movies of the year even if it's not the best.

I think it obviously being a piece of corporate IP hides a bit of what it does well: It's a smart story about wrestling with failure, on a super-hero-sized grand scale, and a fitting final evolution for what Robert Downey Jr. has been doing as Tony Stark for a decade. The plotting is shaggy when it can afford to be and clever when it needs to be, and for all that the grand finale is a bunch of CGI craziness, it's built and scaled to a sort of perfection, getting the audience caught up in the fight for it to actually feel desperate enough before reinforcements show up that you forget that's a possibility, even though it's been the point of much of the movie, and almost getting there again so that the audience can go "oh, right, Carol" when she shows up. The audience whooped and applauded for that, and it's tough to blame them.

I'm sure that Disney and the other studios are all trying to plan something as big and loyalty-generating as Marvel's Infinity Cycle (or whatever we wind up calling this stretch of Marvel movies when they're knee-deep into something else five years from now), but it may be a one-time thing. At least it ended as well as it could.

What I wrote back in May 2019

IFFBoston 2019.182: Monos with bonus Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles

I've mentioned a few times during my IFFBoston entries (almost done, five months later!) that there were a fair amount of decisions I tried to make on the basis of "will this thing get a theatrical release later?" that had me surprised at how many movies already had distributor logos in front of them. Monos was one that I I nervously pushed aside even though I wasn't exactly sure that it would play theaters despite having a kind-of-recongizable American name in the cast. Glad to see it made it, though it may only have a few days left in Boston.

Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles has already left; it was scheduled for a one-week run and I just didn't have a lot of time to write it up around work and other stuff this week. The idea of it is good, but it doesn't quite work out as a whole. More animated biographies in general would be nice, though.

In terms of being an unintentional double feature - they are both the sort of movie where you might wince at how animals are treated. Buñuel does not shy with how the title character worked hard to capture the way that animals die in ways just as horrific as people do in Las Hurdes, and there's a fair amount of time spent butchering a cow in amateurish fashion in Monos that may make you want to look away. Given that they're both short-ish films, it was kind of a lot by the end of the night.

Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas (Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 September 2019 in Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first-run, DCP)

There seems to have been an uptick in biographical graphic novels in recent years, and the idea of films taking the same sort of approach to biographies is tantalizing. Animation has the unique ability to recreate a subject's appearance and movement without seeming like an imitation, and is able to emphasize and exaggerate in ways that may seem phony in live-action. Filmmaker Salvador Simo Busom's film about Luis Buñuel getting one of his own movies made had the right idea, even if the actual picture can use some refinement.

It opens as Buñuel's second film, L'Age d'Or, is just about to open in Paris. Though many of his fellow filmmakers find it a surrealist masterpiece, others are more interested in how Dali was an influence, and it is reviled by mainstream audiences, to the point where it is impossible for Buñuel (voice of Jorge Usón) to find financing for another. An old friend from back home, Ramón Acín Aquilué (voice of Fernando Ramos), impulsively buys a lottery ticket and offers to finance and produce a film if he wins. When the ticket does pay off, they are off to Las Hurdes, a desperately poor region of Spain, to document the region with cinematographer Eli Lota (voice of Cyril Corral), who originally brought the project to Buñuel's attention, and Pierre Unik (voice of Luis Enrique de Tomás), an assistant director and camera operator who has worked on Buñuel's previous films. Ramón will soon find that there is a great deal of difference between admiring an audacious genius and managing one.

The conflict between Luis and Ramón will often drive the story, emphasizing that it is often a bad idea to go into business with a friend, and that the "suits" who are often decried as standing in an artist's way are often creative people themselves, doing their best to make sure that the project eventually winds up in some sort of complete form. It's a familiar-enough refrain that the specifics of this project become more interesting: There is something kind of fascinating about the idea of a surrealist trying to make a documentary, with Buñuel trying to mold the story and force the more outrageous elements to the fore even if it makes the film less of a true depiction of what would have happened the day he filmed it had he not been there, even as the reality is affecting him. Simo Busom, arguably doing the same thing himself, doesn't come down hard on either side but plays with the question.

Full review on EFilmCritic

Monos

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 September 2019 in Landmark Kendall Square #4 (first-run, DCP)

There's a shot in this movie with a pig's head on a stake that seems so unconnected to the rest of the scene that it mostly makes me wonder if Lord of the Flies is also required reading in Colombian high schools and the sort of thing that needs to be referenced when you make a story about kids going feral without adult supervision in the middle of nowhere. It's an impressive take on that basic idea, reflecting a world that is more chaotic even if isolation is more difficult.

The kids in the movie are child soldiers, part of an Organization that has them on a mountaintop, given orders by a short, muscular Messenger (Wilson Salazar) to guard "prisoner of war" Doctor Sara Wilson (Julianne Nicholson) and a dairy cow that local farmers have "donated" to the cause. There are eight, led by Lobo (Julián Giraldo), the oldest of the crew: his girlfriend Lady (Karen Quintero), Dog (Paul Cubides), Boom Boom (Sneider Castro), Swede (Laura Castrillón), Bigfoot (Moisés Arias), nervous Rambo (Sofia Buenaventura), and Smurf (Deibi Rueda), the youngest. Messenger has drilled them, but they're teenagers with guns - things will go wrong, and they will not react well to that happening.

From the start, filmmaker Alejandro Landes is more obviously interested in striking images than meticulously-structured chains of events; he opens it with the kids blindfolded, playing a game of soccer where the ball is a bell, moving carefully and then darting after the thing when it moves. It's a wonderfully surreal scene that maybe doesn't directly foreshadow the rest of the film but establishes the kids as capable despite what they lack. It also gives the viewer a chance to look around the initial setting and see how removed it is from the normal world, something that will come into play a few times. He'll soon be contrasting the two teenage girls in the group offering to braid "La Doctora's" hair and the dungeon in which she's kept, with proof-of-life procedures often seeming confusing, like it's not clear to anyone what The Organization is trying to accomplish.

Full review on EFilmCritic

IFFBoston 2019.04: We Are Not Princesses, Ms. Purple, When Lambs Become Lions, and In Fabric

Sometimes, when planning a festival, you look at a day and maybe think that you're not sure anything in it really grabs you until you see that Ms. Purple is by the guy who did a movie you loved a couple years back, and then that slot's sorted. Then you see In Fabric and think that while it may get a release, it may just be midnight shows at the Coolidge, so better lock that down. Then it's seeing what fits in between, and the two docs seem like the best bet.



It was a schedule that left me without a whole lot of guests on this particular day, just We Are Not Princesses director Bridgette Auger (note: the one picture I got where she's not half-hidden behind some guy's head) and producer Hal Scardino. One thing that they mentioned was that the events that we saw happened back in 2014; editing, animation, and just getting into festivals takes time, after all.

We Are not Princesses

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2019 in Somerville Theatre #2 (IFFBoston, DCP)

In many cases, one might find oneself not quite dismissing this sort of documentary by saying it works because the filmmakers found good subjects, like a movie just happens when you point a camera at an unusual and charismatic person. It's probably more true that interesting subjects are all around, and the real challenges are getting them comfortable enough to open up, then pulling out the best parts. That, as they say, is the tricky part, especially when those people already have as much reason to try and blend into the scenery as the Syrian refugees in We Are Not Princesses do.

The filmmakers do a fair job of that, aided a bit by finding women in these refugee camps a little more willing to be extroverted than others might - they arguably wouldn't be joining a theater program otherwise - and figuratively looking over their shoulders as they discuss their current situation and how it relates to the production of Antigone they're rehearsing at a center in Beirut. For some, venturing outside the house for any reason but to do the shopping is almost terrifying, while others are more at ease than people might expect.

Though the film has the basic shape of a "let's put on a show!" story, the filmmakers are wise to recognize that the actual rehearsal and performance is not nearly so interesting as the discussions it brings about, so while there is a director and a stage and eventually an audience, that whole side of the process is only glimpsed briefly. Instead, directors Bridgette Auger and Itab Azzam focus on the everyday lives that these women lead, or more often let their conversations steer the film. It lets these women fully emerge as themselves, with only as much of Antigone and the play's other characters as they choose to acknowledge, and gives the filmmakers room to focus on things that have little to do with the play - a mother perhaps adapting better to freedoms she remembers from her you than her supposedly more modern daughter, for example.

Full review on EFilmCritic

Ms. Purple

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2019 in Somerville Theatre #5 (IFFBoston, DCP)

Justin Chon made a pretty terrific movie a couple years back whose confrontational title ("Gook") and black-and-white photography may have helped make people reluctant to buy a ticket. This time out, the color is right in the more welcoming title, but in a lot of ways the heart of the film is the same - sibling issues, Korean-American family obligation, assimilation - and the story he crafts from those ideas is still compelling.

It opens with a flashback, a father getting his two children ready for a special occasion, fussing rather a bit more over his daughter than his son. Fifteen years later, daughter Kasie (Tiffany Chu) is 23 and has forgone musical training to spend the last few years looking after their dying father, working for tips as a karaoke hostess with the money stretched thin enough that she can no longer pay the undocumented woman who looks after him while she's away. Calling her brother Carey (Teddy Lee) to help share the load doesn't feel like a great idea, but it's all she's got. Fortunately, his current couch-surfing options are limited, although he's not entirely inclined to let having to watch a bedridden man cramp his style.

Carey wheeling their father around Los Angeles's Koreatown, hospital bed and all, is an undeniably funny image but Chon is careful not to frame it as a clever solution initially - Carey is making a nuisance of himself and inconveniencing everyone around him - although one shouldn't necessarily feel bad about enjoying it: For all that Carey is mostly finding a way to do what he wants, it's worth noting that Kasie is spending all of her time tending to men on separate fronts: Her father, the handsy creeps at the karaoke bar, the brother who eats all the food, a rich kid she dates hoping he'll be around when she needs someone. It's not entirely a movie about how men just expect women to take care of things (and not just because Octavio Pizano's smitten parking valet is there as an exception), but the dynamic is there and worth noting. There's a great moment in flashback that ties it all together, young Kasie instinctively picking up where her departed mother left off.

Full review on EFilmCritic

When Lambs Become Lions

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2019 in Somerville Theatre #2 (IFFBoston, DCP)

More than once during When Lambs Become Lions, I wondered how Jon Kasbe even make this movie. It feels like it shouldn't be possible, requiring the filmmakers to not just embed themselves with criminals and law enforcement simultaneously but for there to be connections and the story to actually connect . How can it be a documentary even if it does have a fair chunk of reenactment footage (which, for all I know, it doesn't)?

It tells the parallel stories of two cousins: Asan, a wilderness ranger in North Kenya, and "X", a poacher working intersecting territory. X is mostly a businessman, with a partner named Lukas who does the actual hunting; by his count, he has felled 16 elephants on his own and more with a team. There are customers waiting for tusks, making X put pressure on Lukas, while Asan is and his colleagues have not been paid for a while, and with a pregnant wife at home, this is the sort of situation where a man might take a little money to let his cousin know where the elephants are.

That's the part of the story that feels most like a fiction film's plot, and it contains the moment when events seem a little bit staged, like Asan and X have lines to get out as they talk to each other. More likely, it's an example of how awkward it can be to add someone new to a relationship - both men have built up a specific rapport with Kasbe and his crew, and now there's this other person added to the mix. In moments like that, you're also not just doing your job and demonstrating things, but potentially changing the direction of the movie - and, let's not forget, potentially committing a crime on-camera. It's likely a weird moment for everyone, so it probably should be strange for the audience as well.

Full review on EFilmCritic

In Fabric

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 April 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (IFFBoston, DCP)

I had not realized that the new Peter Strickland movie was produced by Ben Wheatley's Rook Films, but, wow, is In Fabric ever that movie. It's as eccentric and fetishistic as the rest of Strickland's work, but also as bizarrely funny as the best of the producers' material, and probably more accessible for all that than many of its predecessors. The movie may still be something of an acquired taste, but it's weird more than outright baffling.

It is, after all, a movie about a demonic/possessed/otherwise more than peculiar dress, one initially purchased by middle-aged divorcée Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), looking to dip her toe back into the dating pool. She bought it from a sinister saleswoman (Fatma Mohamed) during Bentley & Soper's Boxing Day sale, and while there is initially little out of the ordinary, strange things start happening soon enough, particularly when Sheila's snotty model girlfriend Gwen (Gwendoline Christie) tries it on, let alone others.

More happens later; In Fabric is a bit of a relay-race horror movie, where the cursed object will be on the move rather than tormenting the same people past the bounds of credulity. I suspect that many will find the good stuff to be in that first leg, and in no small part because Marianne Jean-Baptiste is so terrific to watch in what certainly seems like her biggest role since Secrets & Lies (with a lot of time playing New York-accented detectives in between). When you ask yourself who would be the logical protagonist for a movie about a killer dress, a vain beauty like Gwendoline Christie's model might come to mind, but Jean-Baptiste's Sheila is a lot more interesting to watch; she's got a sensible vibe but could maybe use a confidence boost, just the sort of person who would be most vulnerable but also potentially be able to figure out what's going on. She's a stabilizing influence that keeps the strange at bay and also makes it seem more sinister for intruding upon this working-class mother.

Full review on EFilmCritic

IFFBoston 2019.03: Pizza: A Love Story and Not for Resale

Both Thursday and Friday wound up being loosely-themed double features for me, though Nancy and the rest of the Festival team don't necessarily plan it that way (I did have to get on the T between Them That Follow and The Death of Dick Long for my "Danger Down South" pairing on Thursday). These two are in the same room, though, and might draw locals and fans the way the music docs historically have.



First up we have Pizza: A Love Story director Gorman Bechard and producer Dean Falcone, who both hail from New Haven and have strong opinions on pizza in ways that only people from New Haven can have. They've tended to work on music documentaries together - you can tell from the rolodex of people they're able to call on to be talking heads, winking as they hint that they plan stops on their tours in New Haven for the express purpose of having good pizza afterward. Bechard and Falcone were animated, from how they are a bit wary of Netflix as independent filmmakers ("Netflix tells you how to finish") to anybody in the audience who implied that they liked inferior toppings on their pizza.

They probably did not approve of my going to Dragon Pizza, but would probably prefer that to Oath or whatever the other options are in Davis Square. Around that time, Pepe's opened a location at the Burlington Mall, but we haven't gone there for work yet.



Next was cinematographer Thomas Chalifour-Drahman and director Kevin J. James of Not for Resale. One of the video game shops they focused on is in Salem, so it's owner and some of its loyal patrons were on hand, and from some of the questions, college kids who shop at other featured spots when they're home on break. It's also worth noting that when they were talking about Pokemon Go, they location people were poking around was Davis Square, which isn't quite like seeing The Third Man in Vienna, but is still fun.

Just a generally fun talk, which goes along with how the film itself is upbeat and sees a great deal of potential in how digital distribution has changed gaming but wants to talk about how it's maybe not all great.

Pizza: A Love Story

* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2019 in Somerville Theatre #5 (IFFBoston, DCP)

Gorman Bechard's film about the famous "apizza" restaurants of New Haven, Connecticut could have taken the path of following how pizza came to America, took its first steps of evolution into its most ubiquitous forms in that city, and then spread from there, but instead it stays hyper-local and specialized. It's the kind of movie that, from a commercial perspective, initially seems like it won't travel at all and is kind of an act of madness. Those movies are kinds of great, though, a drill-down that maybe doesn't increase general knowledge but feels like half specific insight and half gleefully useless (but delightful) trivia.

That trivia starts coming early with the very words New Havenites use for this dish: Pizza is "apizza", pronounced "a-beatz", a plain pie does not necessarily include cheese - that is labeled "mozz" on the menu and pronounced "moots". It came to America via the Italian immigrants who came to find a job at Sargent Hardware and, having found one, wrote to their family and friends, initially a sort of sideline for bakeries just making simple bread. In 1925, Frank la Pepe opened what is today Pepe's, though it was a small concern until 1935, with Sally's and Tony's opening in 1938, with the latter rebranding itself as "Modern Apizza" in 1944. The original locations still have the original ovens from that time, monsters that take hours to get up to 600-700 degrees Fahrenheit, giving the crust a distinctive char. Locals will tell you that the continuous use of those ovens for eighty-odd years imbues rich smoky flavor that even the most well-intentioned imitators will never match.

Naturally, the film is not entirely about pizza; one can watch it and see Bechard laying out the history of his city, a cycle of immigration, assimilation, and gentrification that extends well beyond New Haven. It's not the deepest possible dive into the topics by a long shot, but tying it into the story of the city's pizza likely gets it a bit more attention even within the city. Bechard never loses his focus, but he does well to establish that the Italian-American neighborhoods where these apizza shops opened and remain despite their no longer necessarily being Italian-American neighborhoods have their own arc that's tied in with the restaurants themselves, and that one shouldn't necessarily ignore that as the price of getting to eat delicious pizza.

Full review on EFilmCritic

Not for Resale

* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 April 2019 in Somerville Theatre #5 (IFFBoston, DCP)

There's been a lot of recent talk online about the potential death of physical media for movies as I begin to flesh the capsule I wrote the night I watched this out, but that's not much of a coincidence; that talk started the moment Netflix announced the "Watch Instantly" option and hasn't slowed down since. Not for Resale covers how that same dynamic is at play in the world of games, from the point of view of the proprietors of video game shops, but it's worth a look even for those of us whose most recent game system purchase is a Sega Dreamcast; this medium is different from others in many ways, but in others it's just a few steps ahead.

It starts by introducing Neil Crockett, who has owned and operated GameZone in Salem, Massachusetts for over 25 years, long enough to see his business go from retail-priced new releases to buying and selling used copies to stocking "retro" games from the days when he first opened for the collectors' market. Other people operating such stores across the country are similar, although some are younger, not necessarily having been alive to play the Atari 2600s in the back when they were new. Despite the video game industry growing to massive size, this sort of retail long been a business for people aiming to make a little money off their hobby rather than a lot, and times are getting tighter - new games often don't get physical releases at all, and as older gamers leave the hobby, there aren't as many new collectors looking to buy what they're selling off.

There's a recipe for despair in that, and I suspect that director Kevin J. James probably wound up talking to some people whose shops closed by the time post-production was done, and who could have provided some bitter interview footage. He doesn't show much of that, to the point where one of the things that struck me early on about Not for Resale, compared to other documentaries about industries in transition, is how positive many of its video game retailers were about the shift to digital marketplaces; they're too much in love with the medium to look past that potential. It's an attitude that manifests in the film, which is able to look at its subjects in whole without framing them as quixotic.

Full review on EFilmCritic

IFFBoston 2019.05: One Child Nation, The Pollinators, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, and For the BIrds

Sunday at IFFBoston wasn't quite planned as a documentary day but wound up that way once the overlapping showtimes, need to get back and forth on the subway (though I think this was the first year in a long time when the MBTA didn't have the Red Line shut down north of Harvard for the festival's weekend), and Sunday schedule which has the last shows of the day during the 8pm hour rather than after 9pm, etc., finished asserting themselves. I basically started wanting to see One Child Nation - that Amazon had already purchased it and it would run for a while in August and September seemed unlikely for what seemed like a niche film - it was easier to stick around the Brattle for The Pollinators. That had a long-enough Q&A to make Cold Case Hammarskjöld the best option after returning to Davis, and then a quick turnaround to get into For the Birds seemed more interesting to me than Gutterbug.



First guests of the day were for Pollinators, including editor/producer Michael Reuter, producer Sally Roy, and director Peter Nelson, with the Q&A being hosted by Barbara Moran of WBUR. Nelson is at least kind of local, as were many of the subjects, so there were a lot of people in the audience that knew either him or beekeeping (or both), which can stretch this sort of thing out but, fortunately, didn't let it devolve into minutiae. One of the interesting things that came up in the Q&A was how it can be easy to misrepresent the nature and extent of someone's expertise. David Hackenberg, for instance, absolutely looks the part of an old farmer who has certain practical knowledge but which can be either misguided or the common sense everyone needs to hear, but he's apparently also a skilled researcher who is often at the center of discovering what is actually going on when the bee community is facing a crisis. You can see the respect for him in the film, but not the totality of his influence



Last movie of the day was For the Birds, with the fest's Joe Arino (l) hosting a Q&A with director Richard Miron and producer Jeffrey Starr. I have apparently reached the age when someone like Miron looks about twelve to me, but it seems like he didn't quite stumble into a good movie but certainly was able to recognize one when it presented itself, as he was volunteering at the farm animal sanctuary featured in the film when all of this started. It was kind of a touchy matter getting the buy-in of everyone involved, and there was some stuff around the edges which was kind of surprising (sanctuary employee Sheila Hyslop returned home to the UK and died soon after her part of the film was over; the stress of this experience being part of the former though likely not the latter).

I did find myself scratching my head a bit when then talked about the story the film tells, because the story of Kathy getting free of her compulsions doesn't really happen on-screen, but seemingly between the last full chapter and the epilogue. The film mostly shows her static intransigence, with the growth and change they talked about less shown than alluded to. Which is fine; though we're often taught that stories are about change, stubbornness is real too, and sometimes what a person gets from a movie is more important than what its makers feel they've put out there.

One Child Nation (aka Born in China)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (IFFBoston, DCP)

China's "One Child Per Family" policy was launched in 1979, made an official part of their constitution in 1987, and officially ended in 2015, and the rest of the world often took it for granted, looking at the country's ten-figure population and figuring that yes, this is draconian, but something needed to change. As filmmaker Wang Nanfu points out, this message took hold with even more force in China itself, except that ignoring the implications of it there was an active (but seemingly necessary) choice. This film's close-up view leaves some questions unasked and unanswered, but also makes it impossible to simply view it as an abstraction.

Wang grew up in China, in Diangxi Province's Wang village, and her family was unusual in that she had a younger brother. Her family wasn't breaking the law in this - there was a process by which one could petition for the right to have a second child - but growing up at the height of the country's propaganda push for the policy, it was a black mark on her family. She would later go to college in the United States and marry there, returning home to visit after the birth of her first child, and finding the idea of the government involving itself so closely in her family newly chilling, she starts asking questions.

The thing about China's one child per family policy that has fascinated me in recent years is how it leads to a society not just without siblings, but without aunts, uncles, and cousins, and I always wondered to what extent if eliminating extended family as a support system outside the state was the goal. This is not a particular focus for this film's makers; the actual why of it is not particularly important, and only a little more time is spent on why the practice was ended. Nor should it be, considering the more immediate and personal interests that the filmmakers have. That focus guides the film, sometimes constraining it, but also constantly emphasizing the human reaction as opposed to just the theoretical. Wang and co-director Lynn Zhang Jialing seldom take a broad view, but focus closely on individual stories, often to the point of discomfort.

Full review on EFilmCritic

The Pollinators

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2019 in the Brattle Theatre (IFFBoston, DCP)

Mention bees and farming to most people, and certain images leap to mind, along with the specific ways that human beings have messed up the natural order of things. These ideas are not necessarily wrong, but they are incomplete, sometimes in surprising ways. The Pollinators comes from deep enough inside this industry that one must sometimes account for a skewed perspective, but it presents a picture of modern agriculture from a point of view few think about, and does so in a way that is properly alarming but not necessarily alarmist.

Director Peter Nelson, a beekeeper himself, spends most of the film with others doing the same work, starting with old hand David Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries. His company's business is not primarily honey or mead or wax candles, but the bees themselves: Though it is common knowledge that bees are vital for pollination, there simply aren't enough wild bees to go around; colony collapse disorder is not the issue that it was from 2005 to 2008, but between pesticide use and the way American industrial agriculture often tends to vast fields of one type of crop, native pollinators are stretched thin and in some cases threatened. The solution is folks like Hackenberg putting hives on pallets, and pallets onto trucks, and going where they're needed. It's possible because pollination seasons for different crops are staggered, but supply isn't far from demand and California's almond crop requires almost every bee-for-hire in America

One wonders, watching this, just how many systems like mobile apiaries their food supply relies on, and just what sort of state they're in. That these businesses are already stretched thin enough that things like a breed of mite which attacks queen bees or the adoption of new pesticides can create a genuine crisis gives the film a bit of urgency and something like a story, but in a lot of ways it serves to illustrate the way that this business seems genuinely odd to outsiders, with these living, autonomous things treated as equipment. It's an odd feeling to go from close-up photography of bees seemingly behaving like they're in the wild to a clearing full of dead ones because a neighboring farmer sprayed their crops without warning. Queens are replaced and rotated like engine parts.

Full review on EFilmCritic

Cold Case Hammarskjöld

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2019 in Somerville Theatre #5 (IFFBoston, DCP)

In Cold Case Hammarskjöld, satirical documentarian Mads Brügger does a convincing imitation of a dog who has finally caught the tail he's been chasing and realizes he's got no idea of what comes next. It doesn't quite become a repudiation of Brügger's life's work, and that of the thriving industry that uses comedy to help people process what is often an insane world, but it runs hard into the limits of that approach. I half-suspect that the film still has the form it does both because reshaping it would have felt less honest and because hitting those limits wound up fascinating him.

The film offers a refresher on Dag Hammarskjöld - or primer, if your education was like mine and gave him just a cursory mention - that he was elected Secretary General of the United Nations in 1953, and more activist in the role than many anticipated, until he did in a plane crash on the way to attempt mediation in the Congo in 1961. Many suspected foul play than and for decades later, but nothing was proven. Swedish private detective and aid worker Göran Björkdahl has what he believes is new evidence, and teams with Brügger to document the investigation. They are particularly focused on Jan Van Risseghem, a Belgian pilot and alleged soldier of fortune who cuts the figure of a James Bond villain in the one photograph they have, and may have been the one to shoot the plane down.

That image is so striking that Brügger appropriates the trademark white suit and the like to narrate the film, renting hotel rooms and having a pair of African women serve as secretaries transcribing it. Why two? As he himself mentions, it's an idea he had early on, maybe something that could be worked into the film as a commentary about details not lining up, or him disposing of lackeys as he grows more drawn into the character and obsessed. After all, as he admits, this investigation isn't going to go anywhere, but it may serve as a good jumping-off point for a movie about seeing conspiracies in every corner or how our knowledge of even recent history is incomplete or white dilettantes in Africa. And there is still a lot of that plan visible: Those interstitials in the hotel rooms are still in the movie and as off-kilter as one would hope, and there's a sort of archness to the scenes of Brügger and Björkdahl conducting their initial investigation. The earnest Björkdahl recedes a bit in order to play up Brügger not treating it as a joke but knowing that he's making something of a meta-movie.

Full review on EFilmCritic

For the Birds

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2019 in Somerville Theatre #4 (IFFBoston, DCP)

Sometimes the filmmakers won't let a documentary be over until it's all the way over, and that's the case with For the Birds, whose epilogue isn't exactly long but is very much something else after the main thread is tied up. It goes on and can't help but feel like it's drifting too far from the movie you came to see. Of course, the main body of the film can be drawn out and uncomfortable itself, but it's not like you'd want a story of hoarding and self-destructive behavior to go down easy.

It starts innocently enough, with VHS footage of upstate New York resident Kathy Murphy befriending a duck she names Innes Peep. Fast forward a few years to 2020, though, and there are dozens of ducks, turkeys, and chickens in and around the small house she shares with husband Gary, and it's obviously a bad situation. The place is impossible to keep clean, many of the birds are growing sickly, Kathy almost never goes out, and though it may not be the main reason their daughter is estranged, it's not helping. A call to the local Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary brings employee Sheila Hyslop to visit, and she convinces Kathy to let her bring some of the birds away with her, though Kathy is not necessarily aware that they won't be coming back (even if one of her beloved turkeys wasn't so sick it didn't survive very long).

Hoarding is not necessarily an activity one associates with living things, so it's interesting to see Hyslop both casually identify Kathy's behavior as such and also be alarmed by the extent of it. What's a bit surprising is that there is never much indication as to whether any of the birds return some of Kathy's affection or seem out of sorts when rescued and placed in a new environment. It could cause a bit of a disconnect, as the movie on the one hand points out that the animal abuse is what makes this a bit worse than garden-variety hoarding but leaves that abuse a bit abstract, but never quite does. Instead, it highlights just how carelessly one-sided this situation is, and gives a fair window into the neediness that seems to be driving her. There are comments dropped that sometimes offer the beginnings of an explanation, but filmmaker Richard Miron is more interested in looking at the facts of her situation rather than trying to figure it out.

Full review on EFilmCritic

IFFBoston 2019.02: Them That Follow & The Death of Dick Long

So very late. Mostly because I've been busy with fun things, sure, and because I was trying to catch up with the previous festival, but also because the plan of doing quick write-ups on Letterboxd while waiting in line apparently didn't happen with these two, which just had star ratings. You'd think I'd have had time on the T ride I had to take after each one, but maybe the app was buggy. So this gets posted the day after Them That Follow closes in/around Boston.



A shame, because I liked the movie, and it was fun having one of the two directors (Daniel Savage, on the left) there for interrogation. One of the main topics of discussion was, of course, the cast; IIRC, Alice Elgort, probably the least-known of the main cast, was actually who they started with and built around, which surprised me a bit.

One thing that kind of amused me and once again reminded me that it's good for us to get out of our silos sometimes is the number of people who only recognized Olivia Colman in that cast and came for her. Blew my mind, it did, because these people clearly need to watch Justified to get good and familiar with Walton Goggins, who was admittedly the reason I came. Start with Season 2, which also features co-star Kaitlyn Dever and Margo Martindale, if you must. It also seems like more likely to pull people into this sort of movie than The Crown, but, again, silos.

Speaking of Dever, she's amassed an awfully impressive "holy cow, that's the same person?" career growing up, between Justified, Short Term 10, Them That Follow, and Booksmart. I've loved all of those and I think I maybe recognized her as being the same person in Justified and Them That Follow because the context was a bit closer. She's great and hopefully will soon be written off that Tim Allen thing as being away at college so that she can do more good stuff.



Two stops down, BUFF & IFFBoston teamed for The Death of Dick Long, which I think was the first movie to surprise me by having a studio logo in front of it at the festival. I generally try and choose what I see at festivals by what seems least likely to show up on the same screens again later, and this seems like a prime candidate for that, but apparently A24 is putting it out in September. I wonder if that's the inevitable future of second-tier festivals like IFFBoston - Amazon/Netflix/A24 are slurping up so much at Sundance and SXSW that these festivals become preview screenings with guests and local showcases. Which are both good things to have, and it's probably better that things get bought quickly rather than linger in uncertainty.

Anyway, here's writer Billy Chew, director Daniel Scheinert, and critic Jason Gorber, who wanted to lead the Q&A as a fan of the film. There was a lot of talk about The Thing That Happens but I don't recall it being much more than an attempt to push the envelope. Scheinert also assured us that "Daniels" wasn't broken up, but just doing separate projects.

Next up.... Probably day #5, as two movies from that have opened recently.

Them That Follow

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2019 in Somerville Theatre #5 (IFFBoston, DCP)

Movies like Them That Follow often have a hard time finding the right balance of respect and alarm in regard to the fringes of society where their characters exist, and in this case filmmakers Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage maybe veer too far toward the respectful. They've got too fine a cast to not make a good movie, but the naturally soapy elements get a bit blunted by not wanting to be insensitive and exploitative where its snake-handling community is concerned.

Lemuel (Walton Goggins) is the preacher for that community, seemingly sincere in his beliefs but also experienced enough with how the outside world reacts to them to lay low. He's got a daughter, Mara (Alice Englert), who has been expected to marry his deacon Garret (Lewis Pullman) for some time, though she's really got eyes for Augie (Thomas Mann); his parents Hope (Olivia Colman) and Zeke (Jim Gaffigan) are part of Lemuel's flock, but he doesn't attend. It's a situation that is only likely to become more tense as Lemuel takes in Dilly (Kaitlyn Dever), an impressionable young teen whose parents have abandoned her; a parishioner is bitten during services; and Mara misses a period.

There's not a whole lot of clutter to this film, which is likely part of the point. Though law enforcement is mentioned and some shuffling goes on to avoid Lemuel being charged with any injuries or deaths that occur at his services, they're not seen directly very often; Dilly's junkie mother is most noted for her absence and the mess she leaves behind. Maybe it's just summer, but there's no sign that Dilly is attending school, and though Augie clearly has things going on outside of this community, that side is similarly seldom glimpsed. It's an arrangement that can often diminish how cult-like this group seems, which should lead to a bigger impact when the more extreme facets of their faith become important, but more often just makes it feel like this story could take place in any community built around faith. The broad strokes apply to so many cases that this one could use being more specific at times.

Full review on EFilmCritic

The Death of Dick Long

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2019 in the Brattle Theatre #5 (IFFBoston, DCP)

Just enough time passed between my seeing The Death of Dick Long and getting around to fleshing my notes out into a full review that it took me a while moment to remember exactly what about it made it stand out among "dumb person crime" movies, and I'm not entirely sure whether that speaks well of it or not. One the one hand, it's an entertaining dark comedy even without the twist, but on the other, I've got to wonder what it says that the filmmakers couldn't get that image lodged in my brain. Of course, maybe it says something about me.

It opens with Zeke Olsen (Michael Abbot Jr.), Earl Wyeth (Andre Hyland), and Dick Long (Daniel Scheinert) wrapping up a garage session - their band Pink Freud doesn't play many gigs, but that's not exactly the point of getting together to jam - before one says "let's get weird" and they proceed to get messed up on something stronger than beer. We don't see how the night ends, but the next morning begins with Dick dead, Earl ready to cut and run, and Zeke having no idea how to get all the blood out of his car's back seat before driving daughter Cynthia (Poppy Cunningham) to school. It gets worse - Cynthia's teacher (Jess Weixler) is Dick's wife, and the body that is soon brought to the attention of Sheriff Spenser (Janelle Cochrane) is in rather alarming condition.

A big part of what makes this sort of movie fun - and makes the good ones work - is how they split naturally in two, with one half of the film covering how a couple of guys who aren't that bright and aren't exactly criminals by nature try to dig their way out of the mess they find themselves in while the other covers how the small-town cops try to reluctantly dig their way into it, and how a film handles that second part can make or break it - if this is dull in comparison to the hijinks, or makes the very idea of right and wrong look too foolish, or too fully turns the audience against the hapless guys they're chasing, it can be a real mess. That Janelle Cochrane and especially Sarah Baker are so good as the local constabulary thus becomes one of the best parts of the film. It's easy to map Cochrane's Sheriff Spenser as the equivalent of Frances McDormand's character in Fargo, although she's a little less casually good at her job and a little more jaded at her own position even if what's happened to this difficult-to-identify body still has her rattled. As much as she often seems like the only reasonable adult in this town, there's a bit of a weight to how people don't respect the authority of women in their fifties even if they radiate experience. She's also quite wary of "Duds" Dudley's enthusiasm, and it's understandable, but Dudley and Baker's take on her are a great complement - she's enthusiastic but not exactly a natural crime-solver, and the way she's often a half-step behind Spenser but also less intimidated by what they're getting into makes her a fun comedic foil. It also makes her very sympathetic; the viewer occasionally laughs at her but also identifies with how she's learning, and how in some ways she's not far off from the dopey guys in the other half even if her trajectory is different.

Full review on EFilmCritic

IFFBoston 2019.01: Luce

A bit weird to talk about opening night of IFFBoston after I've already tackled the end, but it's the movies. Think of it as one of those times when the movie opens with a flash-forward to the climax, and try to forget all the times I've said that this device is basically awful.

Anyway, let's get to the reason we all get excited about opening night of IFFBoston and want to relive it months later: Seeing what Jon wore while playing the theremin as everybody took their seats!

Bold. Not quite as perfect as the spaceman outfit from two years ago, but I'm not sure that will ever be topped.

The guest for the night was Luce director Julius Onah (right), with film critic Jason Gorber handling the interrogation duties. That Jason clearly liked the film much more than this one, but to be fair to it, Luce hits a couple of things that drive me more nuts than they ought to in terms of how "bad" they are as storytelling devices, and I talked to a lot of people who really liked it but aren't bothered by the high-school debate reasoning and "I'm going to say something's important but make sure not to show it for a while". And I am kind of intrigued by seeing it as a play, as I get the feeling that a lot of those devices might work better on the stage.

Onah joked about directing a Cloverfield movie without knowing he had, but made what was pretty likely a good choice not to go into much detail on how that all happened. The Cloverfield Paradox was a huge mess, but no need to burn bridges there.

Odds are long that I'll get more of these done while at Fantasia, but I suppose stranger things have happened.

Luce

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 April 2019 in Somerville Theatre #1 (IFFBoston Opening Night, DCP)

Luce is a clever film that often leans a bit too hard on its cleverness, especially in the first half. The filmmakers seemingly love to show a small facet of something and make it very clear that there's more to be seen and maybe they'll get to it later, or to lay out facts and perspectives in debate-team style, pointing out that it's working with semantics rather than being straightforward or even playing at being straightforward.

The comparison is natural because title character Luce Edgar (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is the star of his school's debate team and a generally impressive speaker all-around; his accomplishments make the whole community and especially the parents who adopted him as a refugee from Eritrea proud. But as he gives his latest speech, his History of Government teacher Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer) looks suspicious, and she's soon calling Amy and Peter Edgar (Naomi Watts & Tim Roth) in for a conference. Luce, it seems, recently wrote a paper in the voice of revolutionary Franco Fannon when most of the other students chose someone less incendiary, and when Harriet searched his locker, she found something which suggests he might not just be interested in that as rhetoric. Luce has an explanation, but once the idea is in a person's head, it can be hard to get it out.

The trouble is getting more than just an idea out of it, and filmmaker Julius Onah and co-writer J.C. Lee (who also wrote the original play) don't have as much in the way of story as the movie really needs. Especially early on, they will tend to tease that Luce or Harriet has something to say or show to people, but then not actually do so for flimsy reasons, and that's a tactic that needs to be executed with care - even on the first try, it will often make the audience feel like the filmmakers are just screwing with them, and even when that's fun, repeating it tends to make a viewer more resentful each time. Once that happens, the payoff at the other end has got to be a nearly-perfect case of something one doesn't see coming despite it making perfect sense in retrospect, although ultimately being kind of loopy the way this movie does is not necessarily a terrible alternative - it's at least not underwhelming.

Full review on EFilmCritic