First, I'll link to my review of the final Centerpiece of the festival, Last Chance Harvey. Click here to read the piece over at the Bucket Reviews main site.
Adam Resurrected (dir. Paul Schrader, Germany/USA/Israel) - Last year, I defended Paul Schrader's much-maligned The Walker as an important work of political fiction, but I won't do the same for his latest abstract examination of social deviance, Adam Resurrected. As is his norm, the accomplished director gets a great performance out of his lead--this time Jeff Goldblum playing Adam, a Nazi-tortured former-circus-entertainer living out his later days in an Israeli mental hospital. But the movie sags on the whole--it's too broad and meandering in its metaphorical exploration of the sexual repression and violence related to the atrocities of World War II to achieve a lucid collective comment. For example, much of the film consists of Adam's horrible memories of serving as a dog (yes, literally) to a Nazi Officer (Willem Defoe), passages that serve nearly no purpose beyond simple shock-value in the end. Schrader's usual visual accomplishments are abundant, but don't expect to find anything satisfying in the way of a narrative. 1-1/2 Buckets out of 4.
Kassim the Dream (dir. Kief Davidson, USA) - Documentarian Kief Davidson's latest spans two continents telling the amazing underdog story of boxer Kassim "The Dream" Ouma, who overcame a tragic youth as a child-soldier in Uganda to become the Junior Middleweight Champion of the World. The first half of the film examines Ouma's life story and success, and the latter follows his return to Uganda to reunite with his family after a long government ban. It's all amazing stuff on paper, but Kassim isn't that likable--he's a typical boxer, ego-obsessed and very into superficial hip-hop culture--making the doc tough to latch onto. Had Davidson taken a more critical attitude toward the material, delving into how the tragedies in Ouma's life affected his personality rather than interpreting them as unabashed tearjerker-material, then perhaps Ouma would've been a more fascinating (and in turn endearing) figure. As is, Kassim the Dream tells a remarkable life-story in an equally unremarkable way. 2-1/2 Buckets out of 4.
Niloofar (dir. Sabine El Gameyel, France) - This tale of an Iraqi girl running from an arranged-marriage with an older man is interesting in that it fuses contemporary Middle East issues with an age-old story (and equally old-fashioned visual style), but the characters and performances aren't especially compelling. It's nice to see a filmmaker make the most out of simple storytelling techniques and at 82-minutes Niloofar is never a tedious sit, but the movie isn't distinguished enough for me to wholeheartedly recommend it. 2-1/2 Buckets out of 4.
Playing Columbine (dir. Danny Ledonne, USA) - Danny Ledonne's controversial computer game "Super Columbine RPG Massacre!!!" doesn't strike me as the thought-provoking work of art he calls it in this ego-inflated "documentary" defense. Nor was there any point in Playing Columbine at which I was convinced that there was any reason for me to play a simulation as one of the gunman involved the most famous high-school shooting to date. But the film did get me thinking about the possibility for video-games to function as art--not just a source of recreation--and it features more than a few illuminating interviews. Ledonne's goal may have been self-promotion, but he nonetheless hits on several important points about what the gaming-industry has achieved so far and where it's headed in the future. 2-1/2 Buckets out of 4.
Tulpan (dir. Sergei Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan) - This ultra-naturalistic tale of a little-known culture does for Kazakhstan what The Story of the Weeping Camel did for Mongolia. Only problem is: if you're not particularly interested in what it's like to live as a Kazakhstani lamb farmer, then the experience will prove painful. The non-actor performances are good--if they can be considered "performances", that is--but they don't trump the tediousness of hearing a dying lamb squealing for 20 minutes in a semi-fictional movie that would've been more compelling had it been a straight-up Discovery Channel documentary. 1-1/2 Buckets out of 4.
Worlds Apart (dir. Niels Arden Oplev, Denmark) - This indictment of the Jehovah's Witnesses Church in Denmark is just as culturally fascinating as it is involving on a human level. 17-year-old Sara (Rosalinde Mynster) finds she has differences with the Church and walks a defiant path toward excommunication when she falls in love with Teis (Jordan Philip Asbaek), an older guy who views Witnesses as brainwashed cult-members. Mynster is sympathetic and sexy in the vulnerable lead role and the film is never anything short of immersing. The movie admittedly runs into some problems in that Asbaek has a downright (unintentionally) creepy presence and Teis is definitely too old for Sara, making it tough f0r the viewer to accept him as a legitimate love-interest. But upon retrospect, these facts may actually enhance the movie's realism because, after all, much of the reason why Sara strays from her family and fellow Witnesses is that their strict culture causes her to want to rebel in a dramatic way, meaning she would find Teis' age and secular beliefs all the more attractive. If you don't know much about the focal religion and/or its prominence in the film's native country, prepare to be blindsided. 3-1/2 Buckets out of 4.And that concludes my (belated) end coverage of this year's AFI Fest. See you next year.
Posts
