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.

Two nights at the Arlington Captiol: The Pirates!: An Adventure with Scientists and Nesting

Actually, three nights at the Capitol this week, including The Avengers on Monday. As a venue, it's got its issues - five of the six screens have center aisle, which is a bit of a nuisance for those of us who like to sit in the center - but like their sister theater in Somerville, it's a nice place that prides itself on good presentation, and the ice-cream shop in the back

Nesting showing up there seemed kind of unusual, though. It's the right place for it - if you're going to book a theater to show your tiny indie movie for a week, the 48-seat room is probably the proper size - but even with that being the case, the Regent down the street seems to be used for that purpose more often, or the microcinema at the Somerville. Theater #6 is generally the "last stand" of a movie on its way out of town or used for birthday parties.

I wonder how many similar venues it's playing in across the country right now. I got a heads-up on this one because the lead actor is from Massachusetts and the distributors were hoping for an interview, which I don't really do between the day job and everything else (all I could spare was a middling review), but it's not listed in many places. It's not really a bad movie, and in some ways that works against it - it doesn't have the resources or ambition to really flop big. It's capable enough, with a few good jokes, but never puts itself out there in a way that not just pleases audiences, but maybe convinces festivals or distributors to give it a shot.

Still, one thing about a 48-room screening room is that a couple dozen people (some of whom likely know Todd Grinnell) feels like the movie is pretty well-attended. I've been to movies with bigger crowds that felt abandoned, whereas my opinion of this one likely benefitted a bit from having that much reaction in a small space.

The night before, there were, I think, three of us there to see The Pirates!, which isn't that bad after a couple of weeks. After seeing it, I'm a bit less outraged about the name change from "The Pirates! in An Adventure with Scientists" to "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" for America, mostly because there's only one scientist in a major role. Still, the rationale behind it is troublesome - someone at Sony Pictures quite likely believed that having "scientists" in the title would scare kids away, and, more importantly and sadly, ticket-buying parents might not want their children seeing anything that involved those terrible scientists! In specific terms, it's not really objectionable, but the thought process behind it is awful.

(Which dovetails nicely into the next thing I'm writing up, but that's for tomorrow...)

The Pirates! in An Adventure with Scientists (aka The Pirates! Band of Misfits)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 May 2012 in the Arlington Capitol #4 (first-run, Real-D 3D)

It's a bit of a puzzle to fans of the medium (and quality family movies) that Aardman Animation is not more popular in the U.S. Is it just too British? It can't be the quality of their work - even something like The Pirates!, which isn't quite as brilliant as Chicken Run or their Wallace & Gromit pieces, has a tremendously impressive amount of quality packed into every frame and the animation thereof.

Though his crew loves him, The Pirate Captain (voice of Hugh Grant) is considered a joke by other aquatic marauders, so he sets out to win the annual Pirate of the Year Award with equal parts delusion and determination. He finds no booty on any of the ships he raids, although a passenger on one, the Beagle, believes that his parrot Polly is quite extraordinary. Promised rewards beyond compare, the crew and this Charles Darwin (voice of David Tennant) voyage to London to present Polly to the Royal Society, even though The Pirate Captain's trusty Number Two (voice of Martin Freeman) finds the whole thing suspicious and it brings them perilously near the pirate-hating Queen Victoria (voice of Imelda Staunton).

Aardman productions, whether stop-motion like this film or CGI like the recent Arthur Christmas, tend to be simple in concept but meticulously constructed in production, and The Pirates! is no exception. From the way that the pirates are named, Gideon Defoe's original book (which he adapted as a screenplay) at least imitates something pitched to those whose age has not attained a second digit, and the vast majority of the jokes are some variation on "this character is rather dim". Defoe, director Peter Lord, co-director Jeff Newitt, and the rest of the filmmakers pack creativity into every corner, though, whether it be with amusing anachronisms (and other liberties taken with history), background gags that will eventually give home audiences' freeze-frame buttons a workout, and tossed-off references that will amuse the adults in the theater without leaving a hole in the movie for the kids. It's cognizant of being a kids' movie about thieves and cutthroats without ruining the fun.

Full review at EFC.

Nesting

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 11 May 2012 in the Arlington Capitol #6 (first-run/four-wall, video)

Nesting is a nice enough little indie comedy that does nobody any harm and has the occasional pretty decent moment. That's a nice starting point, but the movie could use a little bit more of everything, from resources to rewrites.

Neil (Todd Grinnell) and Sarah (Ali Hillis) have been married a few years, just long enough that Neil is starting to wonder when the fun girl he married became the yuppie with the fancy coffee machine and planning to redecorate their house. Since this work is going to require them to be out of the house for a few days, they decide to go on a vacation that detours through their old neighborhood, leading (as it does) to them breaking into their old apartment.

Writer/director John Chuldenko doesn't have a bad idea here; the characters start at a place that many at that age will find familiar and the premise of trying to return to their old lives with potentially disastrous results is kind of clever. Unfortunately, Chuldenko doesn't seem to have developed it nearly as well as he could have. The "marriages often fall apart at the 'nesting' stage" theme is laid out baldly but not strongly in the first act, and the end doesn't really have a strong statement on the subject. There's also a weirdly materialist streak to the end that doesn't necessarily sit right.

The big picture has its issues, but Chuldenko does come up with some neat details. There's a fun, off-beat sequence at the beginning that involves Neil taking advantage of his unusual job; the middle section where Neil and Sarah have a series of odd misadventures in their old neighborhood has a bunch of nifty single-use characters and odd situations that are good for a chuckle. There's a number of pretty good lines in there. There are also a few bits where the filmmakers' ambition exceeds their capabilities - it's probably not the best idea to mention a comically large disaster (and pictures of it) if you don't have the budget to actually show it. And while a montage at a certain point would have been a cliché worth mocking, the moment does need something showing us that people are doing stuff.
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.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 May 2012 - 10 May 2012

I'm not going to get cutesy over what the main event is this weekend; I've been psyched about the idea for too long - that's why it's especially hilarious that I probably won't get to see it until at least Monday!

• That main event is, of course, Marvel's The Avengers, which is like if you decided that Iron Man 3 should also be Thor 2 and Captain America 2 and guest-star the Hulk. Oh, and have the guy behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, arguably the last really successful new superhero, direct. It's already opened huge internationally and will likely do the same stateside. It plays at the Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square, Boston Common (including the Imax-branded screen), and Fenway (including the RPX screen). Each actually has a full day's worth of screenings in both 2D and 3D.
  
  It's not the only movie opening with a packed cast, although there's likely little overlap between it and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which features Bill Nighy, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith as English retirees in India. That's a pretty exceptional cast for what appears to be a feel-good comedy. It plays Kendall Square and Boston Common.


• If you want big action and quintessentially British people, the Somerville Theatre has their second James Bond Weekend, with four more 007 films playing on the big screen in 35mm. Diamonds Are Forever and Live & Let Die play Friday night and Saturday afternoon, while The Man with the Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me run Saturday night. $10 per, $20 for a weekend pass.
  
  Now that IFFBoston is over, they have to restock their screen, so they pick up Damsels in Distress from the Kendall and both The Hunger Games and The Cabin in the Woods from the Capitol (the latter actually returning after vacating the premises for nine days).


• If you haven't gotten enough film festival time in from IFFBoston, the Boston LGBT Film Festival will be taking place at a number of venues, taking over the entire schedule for the Brattle Theatre and Museum of Fine Arts while also playing a number of shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art and Coolidge Corner Theatre.
  
  (Okay, not quite the entire schedule at the MFA; there's a free screening on Thursday 10 May at 5pm of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design's 2012 Animation Senior Show, with 22 shorts from graduating MassArt students!)


• The Boston LGBT Film Festival has single shows at the Coolidge from Tuesday the 8th to Thursday the 10th, and this midnight show on the 4th and 5th (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, with a special pre-show drag performance) is also co-presented by the festival.
  
  There are also a few other special screenings: Talk Cinema finishes their season at 10am on Sunday with 2 Days in New York, so those of us that missed it at IFFBoston have a second chance (albeit without Julie Delpy in person). Monday evening is the latest "Sounds of Silents" presentation - 1929's Picadilly, featuring Anna May Wong and a new score from the Berklee College of Music's Department of Film Scoring. On Wednesday, they'll be playing George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Martin Scorcese's epic new documentary on the late Beatle.
  
  They also pick up a couple of movies leaving Kendall Square: Ewan MacGregor and Emily Blunt in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen on film and Turn Me On, Dammit! in the video rooms.


• All those movies moving away from Kendall Square are making room for more than just a couple screens of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The one-week booking is This Is Not a Film, a documentary that follows famed Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has been sentenced to six years of imprisonment and banned from making films for twenty years, shot by a friend on a phone and small DV camera and smuggled out of the country. They also get The Skinny, a story of five friends (all black and gay, one female) meeting up in New York one year after graduating from college. Life lessons ahoy! There's also a single screening of Joffrey: Marvericks of American Dance at 7pm on Wednesday the 9th, documenting the first truly American ballet company.


• ArtsEmerson's Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theater has two restoration prints on tap. The final "Gotta Dance" selection plays Friday at 6:30pm, Saturday at 8:30pm, and Sunday at 2pm, and it's a good one: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell playing beautiful gold-diggers on a transatlantic cruise for director Howard Hawks. The same period also produces The River, the first film in their "Renoir in Technicolor" series, with Jean Renoir and his nephew/cinematographer Claude capturing India at the end of the colonial period. It plays Friday at 8:30pm and Saturday at 2pm & 6:30pm.


• Yellow Submarine has apparently had a painstaking 4K digital restoration, and that new print/digital file will pop up at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on Thursday the 10th for the first of ten shows over the next week and a half. It's... odd, but it's still the Beatles. Well, sort of (others voice the Fab Four outside of the songs).


• The Harvard Film Archive is running the final weekend of Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Cinema Novo and Beyond, with Senhor dos Santos appearing in person at 7pm on Friday (for Rio, Northern Zone), Saturday (How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman), and Sunday (Music According to Tom Jobim, his latest). Two other dos Santos films do not have an appearance scheduled - Hunger for Love: Have You Ever Sunbathed Completely Nude? on Sunday afternoon and The Third Bank of the River on Monday evening.

My plans? Bond Friday and Saturday night, 2 Days in New York and baseball on Sunday, Picadilly Monday, and The Avengers on Tuesday (I mean, I've got to see it before hitting the comic shop on Wednesday, right)? And that's probably enough!

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.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 27 April 2012 - 3 May 2012

If you're in the Boston area and like quality films, especially indie and documentary, you probably already know what you're doing all week. Heck, so does practically everybody but the big multiplexes, as they bend over backwards to stay out of the festival's way. I love this festival so much that I don't mind pushing stuff off, falling even further behind in Japanese class, and eating Monday's Red Sox ticket. I'll get crushed by all that later.

• "This festival" is Independent Film Festival Boston 2012, which kicked off Wednesday night at the Somerville Theatre and uses all five screens there until Monday the 30th before moving to the Coolidge for the 1st and 2nd, with the Brattle joining the fun Friday the 27th through Sunday the 29th. I can vouch for Beyond the Black Rainbow and I Wish; I'm looking forward to BURN, Knuckleball!, 2 Days in New York, Headhunters, Keyhole, and Paul Williams: Still Alive, even though it's likely not actually possible to see them all.



• I don't know if IFFBoston has caused a dip in the business of Kendall Square's new releases in the last few years, but they're standing pretty pat this week. The main new opener is Turn Me On, Dammit!, a Norwegian comedy-drama about a 15-year-old girl with a voracious sexual appetite. Likely a one-week booking, as is a re-release of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which promises both a digital restoration and twelve minutes of "lost" Terry Gilliam animation.



• The theaters involved in IFFBoston go the previously-viewed route when they're not hosting as well, with The Coolidge giving a new print of The Graduate a four-day run from Friday to Monday and picking The Fairy up from Kendall Square (it plays in the wee GoldScreen room). The midnight screening on Friday and Saturday is A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, oddly enough presented by the Boston LBGT Film Festival (or maybe not so oddly; my knowledge of 1980s slashers is close to zero).
  
  That festival will take the Brattle over come next Friday, but the gap between the two fests will be bridged by John Carter in 2D on 35mm film, which was tough to come by in its release a couple months ago. A shame, because the 3D wasn't all that and film just looks better and this film deserved a better chance than it got.



• The studios and chain multiplexes care not for our local film festival and open four movies this week. The surest bet is likely The Pirates! in An Adventure with Scientists... uh, that is, Band of Misfits in North America, because the presence of Charles Darwin will make parents think twice about bringing their kids to a movie about thieving, murderous outlaws. Name aside, it's from the brilliant folks at Aardman, so the stop-motion animation is built for 3D, and a great voice cast will have plenty of good material. In 3D at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Fenway, and Boston Common; the Capitol and Fresh Pond also have 2D shows.
  
  Vibes are also good for The Five Year Engagement, which re-unites Jason Segel with his Forgetting Sarah Marshall director and The Muppets co-writer Nicholas Stoller for a comedy about how his character's plans to marry Emily Blunt keep going awry. It plays the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, and Harvard Square.
  
  The other two don't inspire quite so much optimism. Safe has Jason Statham sporting an American accent as a former New York cop who has to protect a little girl with an eiditic memory from every low-life in the World It's Statham doing Statham-y things, and plays Fresh Pond, Fenway, and Boston Common. Those theaters also have The Raven, featuring John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe in a story that posits a serial killer re-enacting his stories. Cusack seems to really be into it, but the reviews have been poisonous.
  
  In better news, Boston Common is keeping A Simple Life around another week for a full slate of screenings (see it, it's good). And most AMC theaters are building up to the release of The Avengers next week with a Marvel Movie Marathon on Thursday, with Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America, finishing up with the new one at midnight.



• ArtsEmerson's Paramount Theater also has a quiet weekend, settling for two screenings of Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon on Saturday the 28th (2pm, 7pm). This entry in the "Gotta Dance" series features Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse as an old-school hoofer and ballerina trying to succeed despite changing tastes.



• The Harvard Film Archive also runs a reduced schedule; it's not open to the public on Friday or Saturday. The Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Cinema Novo and Beyond retrospective picks back up after that, with El Justicero and A Very Crazy Asylum on Sunday and the three-hour Memories of Prison on Monday. The series has one more weekend booked after this (with dos Santos appearing in person starting on May 4th).



• Fresh Pond splits the Indian screen between two movies. You'll need to speak Telegu to know what's up in Dhamma, so good luck with that, most people reading this post. Tezz is in Hindi but has English subtitles, and co-stars Anil Kapoor (whom American audiences will recognize from Slumdog Millionaire, 24, and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol) and Ajay Devgn and Kanguru Ranaut in what's described as a cat-and-mouse action thriller.



• In part to accommodate IFFBoston, The Cabin in the Woods moves from the Somerville to the Arlington Capitol.

My plans? Living at IFFBoston, and most likely taking Thursday "off" to rest before a weekend of Bond, baseball, and The Avengers.

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.

This Week In Tickets: 16 April 2012 - 22 April 2012

Hey, rest of the country, why don't you have Patriot's Day like Maine and Massachusetts do? Sure, it's more of an elective holiday than one that everybody gets these days, but if you do take it, it's a day off when spring is just getting nice, an excuse for day baseball, and, when things fall just right, an extra day you can procrastinate on your tax returns. Plus, as you can see...



... it's as good a reason to hit up a weekday matinee as any. Heck, for me it's almost mandatory, as the direct route between Fenway Park and my house crosses that of the Boston Marathon, and I can tell you from personal experience that there's no crossing it on foot. On a day as hot as that one was, there is no good reason not to jump into the theater and wait it out for a couple of hours.

I wish I could say Patriot's Day was great from start to finish, but the Red Sox lost and Lockout was only so-so. Things improved quite a bit when I made it to Davis Square, though - a "King" at Boston Burger Company and scoring the big room and a decent crowd for a Monday to see The Cabin in the Woods on 35mm improves pretty much any day.

Tuesday's game - ugh. On the one hand, I got to hang out with my brothers on top of the Green Monster for a while, with Dan plenty excited about Private Stage, the local music show he's been trying to get off the ground practically ever since he started working for a TV station in Portland, Maine, and that's always good. On the other hand, it was an ugly loss (a prelude to the incredible ugliness to come on Saturday) and got kind of chilly by the end of the game.

Lockout

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 April 2012 in Regal Fenway #8 (first-run, Sony Digital 4K)

Why, I wonder, does somebody make a movie this high-concept and goofy and give it a name as generic as "Lockout"? It begs for something self-awarely pulpy, like "Assault on Space Prison One!" (the exclamation point is crucial; without it, you're open to being called blandly descriptive, but with it, you're winking at the audience). Heck, even "Lock-Up" would be okay, because, get it, up, like in orbit? But, no, instead you've got "Lockout", reflecting what a kind of generic movie this is despite the makers' best intentions.

Don't get me wrong, it's fun - stars Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace are a quality odd couple, the type that get on each others' nerves because they're more alike than their different backgrounds would suggest. They banter well, and directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger (who wrote the script with Luc Besson) use that without making a joke of the action. And while some may sniff at the action scene that opens the movie and its bargain-basement effects, I kind of dig it; it says that Mather & St. Leger have more crazy than money and aren't going to let them hold them back. They seem to know just how goofy "space prison" sounds.

But, boy, could this movie have used some better villains. The two brothers leading the riot on Maximum Security One might as well just be called Scottish Nutjob and Scottish Gangster, and the framing story is even more generic. None of the action scenes are staged in a particularly memorable manner, and forget having one make use of free fall or the threats of decompression or radiation, which sort of defeats the point of setting it in orbit.

Back when Escape from L.A. was coming out, John Carpenter talked about wanting to make that a trilogy with "Escape from Earth". I'm not sure latter-day Carpenter would have had something cooler than Lockout in him, but for all this one wants to remind of us Carpenter's Escapes with its loner sent into a high-concept prison to liberate the President's daughter, it needed to use its setting more and create some memorable characters.

The Cabin in the Woods

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 April 2012 in Somerville Theatre #1 (first-run, 35mm)

Well, that was a ton of good fun, with a very nice cast, a clever premise, and a few moments that put a big smile on my face for how absolutely right they are. I love the injection of guys like Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford into this riff on The Evil Dead; they're talented guys who wouldn't be near this movie unless it was more than it appeared to be. And I am very impressed how the movie eventually turns me around on a character I just hated at first sight.

It's good enough that I wish it were perfect, but it's got a few problems that are not exactly small. The main one is that, like a lot of horror movies with a comedic component, it undercuts its scares too much. The kills too quickly cut to a punchline, and while writers Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon initially do a good job of shifting the horror to a new target, it doesn't really stick.

Somewhat related is how (SPOILERS!) going meta makes the movie just a bit hollow. Everything in Cabin is about horror movies themselves, sort of making the point that they've become formulaic out of laziness, which is too bad, because we need scary stories as an outlet to keep the real monsters (Elder Gods/darkness of the human soul) chained up. It's a bit problematic, though; as much as the main thrust is about wanting more creativity and less been-there-seen-that, there is a strong stick-to-the-template message. And then there's the same issue I have with The Midnight Meat Train - I want the optimist/atheist ending, the one where the survivors give the monsters the middle finger and say that they might have been hot shit back when people were primitive with no understanding of the universe, but we're through sending you human sacrifices and if you try to breach our dimension again, we'll drop a nuke in yours. In short, we solve problems in the twenty-first century rather than appease monsters.

Sure, that's not really what the movie is about, but in some ways, the meta-commentary is subtle and contradictory enough that it's not hard to think of what Cabin says about people rather than its genre. (!SRELIOPS)

Mirror Mirror

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 April 2012 in AMC Boston Common #5 (first-run, Sony Digital 4K)

Well, that's what a Tarsem Singh Dhandwar family movie looks like. Just strange all around - having previously gone an average of five years between films, all of which were thematically dark and gritty, this pleasantly fluffy concoction comes just a few months after Immortals. While I knew Tarsem was doing one of the dueling Snow White movies coming out this year, up until very recently I would have bet on Snow White and the Huntsman Kristen Stewart, just based on the looks of them.

Still, Tarsem does all right here - like most of his movies, he embraces artificiality, whether in terms of elaborate and absurd costumes or not caring if a set looks like a set. The whole movie has a nifty storybook look, and when the script by Jason Keller and Melisa Wallack hits a snappy patch, he and the cast do pretty well by it. That's especially true of the seven actors playing the dwarves - it's almost like having the whole lot on-screen at once forces the filmmakers to pick up the pace a little, while the space Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, and Armie Hammer are given in their more spacious sets seems to isolate them timing-wise.

The kids in the theater seemed to dig it, though, and it is kind of their speed: Clever enough, but not requiring a whole lot from the audience.

Independent Film Festival Boston 2012 Mini-Preview: I Wish, "It's Such a Beautiful Day", and Beyond the Black Rainbow

Here's what my schedule looks like for IFFBoston 2012:

Opening Night: Sleepwalk with Me (no choice is an easy choice!)
Thursday: Pelotero & The Imposter (I may go different directions with the first slot, like Polisse or Liberal Arts especially since I've seen a fair number of Dominican baseball stories)
Friday: BURN & Detropia (maybe V/H/S in the second slot if I'm Detroit-ed out)
Saturday: Time Zero, Gregory Crewsdon, Knuckleball!/Kid-Thing, 2 Days in New York/Think of Me, Booster, Beyond the Black Rainbow (aaaarrrrggghhh!!! I want to see both Knuckleball! and 2 Days with guests, but they are packed in tight, sure to be packed, and involve the Red Line co-operating. It may make more sense to just hit the smaller movies)
Sunday: Fairhaven/Downeast, Ai Weiwei/The Whirlpool, Girl Model/From Nothing, Something/Without, Keyhole (or, I have no idea what I'll do other than the Guy Maddin movie)
Monday: Your Sister's Sister, Headhunters (may go with The Revisionaries in the first slot if I'm out of work early enough)
Tuesday: Paul Williams: Still Alive, Rubberneck
Closing Night: The Queen of Versailles

I'll be honest - I'm going to make a lot of decisions about what to see while waiting in line at the Somerville Theatre, considering how little chance it seems like I've had to study and obsess over the schedule. And quite frankly, I'm kind of shocked that having seen these three movies doesn't buy me a whole lot of flexibility.

Beyond the Black Rainbow, for instance, plays pretty much unopposed late Saturday night, and I'm kind of surprised, digging through my Fantasia reviews, that I not only found it kind of middling, but I did so in late afternoon. Honestly, I remember it as being pretty freaking nifty, although such a dead-on re-creation of chilly 1970s sci-fi as to be kind of off-putting. If I had trouble dealing with that at 5pm, I'm not sure how I'd do at 11:30pm.

I also feel kind of bad that I would have found time for the animated shorts program if I hadn't seen "It's Such a Beautiful Day" a few weeks ago at the Coolidge. Sorry, other filmmakers, I'm sure your stuff is great, but that's the one that was getting me in the theater.

Unfortunately, Hertzfeldt himself won't be there; he'll be taking a well-deserved break after touring with the new short. Too bad, because he does a nice Q&A; it always surprises me when guys who do strange movies are that this open and friendly.



See? Despite the black humor on the one hand and crazy philosophizing on the other, that guy seems normal.

And, finally, I can recommend seeing I Wish whole-heartedly; it's a pretty excellent movie.

Kiseki (I Wish)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 22 April 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Talk Cinema, 35mm)

I Wish wanders away from its main story on occasion, following side stories that in a lesser movie would seem like an attempt to disguise just how wispy its main story actually is. And while that maybe the case here, it more often serves to show just how rich the world Hirokazu Kore-eda has created around two separated young brothers is.

Those brothers are Koichi (Koki Maeda) and Ryonosuke (Oshiro Maeda), who have been separated since their parents' divorce. Koichi is eleven or twelve and lives in the relatively quiet port city of Kagoshima with his mother Nozomi (Nene Otsuka) and grandparents (Kirin Kiki and Isao Hashizume); Ryo is a couple years younger and lives in Fukuoko with his father Kenji (Joe Odagiri), who still dreams of being a rock star. Though the boys talk over the phone daily, their cities are on opposite sides of the island. A bullet train will soon connect them, and a tall tale going around Koichi's school about how wishes made at the point where the two trains pass may come true soon has Koichi plotting a trip to the line's midpoint in the hopes of miraculously reuniting his family.

That, at least, is the framework, but Kore-eda does not make a quest out of it except for relatively brief stretches. Instead, he has the audience watch the boys and the people around them, allowing the connections and reflections to sink in. Kor-eda is very careful not to allow either to have anybody in their circles of friends who could serve as any sort of substitute for the other: Though Koichi's friends are not quite so solemn as him, that are, like he is, often defined by the desire for an impossible relationship; the Fukuoko characters are younger and more energetic, with most involved in something creative, whether it be gardening or acting. By building these sets up in parallel, the film not only makes it clear that the brothers are each missing something, but lets the variations on a theme develop all the characters at once. It also implies two halves to human nature - one searching for connection even though it will often end poorly, and the other looking to create something for oneself even if that can be somewhat callous.

Full review at EFC.