AFI Fest: Days Nine & Ten

With AFI Fest 2008 officially over, I've reviewed all of the important tent-poles of the festival. I'll conclude my coverage with capsules of the smaller films I saw on Days Nine and Ten, presented in alphabetical order. (Some will find their ways into theatres in 2009--look out for full reviews then.)

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.

AFI FEST 2008: Day Eight

As you've probably noticed, it's been three weeks since AFI Fest 2008 wrapped up and I haven't posted my coverage of the final weekend. The reason is simple: after the festival, there's not much incentive for me to publish reviews of the selections right away. The films I saw, with a few exceptions, aren't coming to theatres for a couple of months. Given that the reasons to post festival coverage in real-time are to give readers tips and hints about what to see at the festival and to promote the fest, I haven't seen much of a point in putting up formal coverage rather than simply reviewing the films when they are released.

But I have written short blurbs on the movies I haven't covered, and given the substantial amount of e-mails I've received requesting that I finish my coverage, I've decided to put them up. Look out for capsules on Worlds Apart, Playing Columbine, Kassim the Dream, Last Chance Harvey (full review), Adam Resurrected, Tulpan, and Niloofar coming sometime next week.

For now, I've reviewed Day Eight's selections:

First up on Day Eight was Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's baseball drama, Sugar, which serves as further evidence (after 2006's Half Nelson) of the filmmaker-duo's skillful ability to take old-fashioned premises and turn them into piercing, unconventional character studies.

Here, Fleck and Boden's subject is Miguel "Sugar" Santos (Algenis Perez Soto), a young baseball player nicknamed by his teammates for his sweet tooth. Early on in the film, Miguel and two other players are recruited from their Dominican Republic training-camp to play minor-league ball for an Iowa-based team. What immediately follows is a traditional (but totally pleasing) examination of culture-shock as Miguel moves from the Caribbean to the Midwest, but Fleck and Boden only use this setup as an easy way to gain viewers' sympathy for the character before taking a deeper approach. The audience initially bonds with Miguel in the way they would a typical underdog athlete, perhaps even more than they usually would due to the "stranger in a strange land"-element. It's hard not to develop a love for the guy when he walks into a distinctly American diner, for instance, and tries to order eggs, only to discouragingly concede defeat and ask for his usual French toast when his English isn't good enough to tell the waitress how he would like them cooked. (This, of course, is followed by the token pay-off scene in which she brings him all three types and he eagerly learns how to pronounce the terms "scrambled," "over easy," and "sunny-side up.")

But Sugar quickly becomes all but you're average baseball film, studying a young man who has come to the Land of Opportunity with few resources beyond baseball, a game that allows very few potential players prosperous futures. Fleck best expressed the feeling that dominates Sugar's second-half in the Q&A following the screening: "It's clear the movie won't end with Miguel playing his first game at Yankee Stadium." The story isn't so much a knock on the idea of the American Dream as it is a realistic look at how many Dominican boys are brought up with dreams of playing baseball and how few actually end up like Sammy Sosa. Boden and Fleck explore what happens to those who don't make it to the Majors through their fictional protagonist, and the results are just as interesting on a human level as they are as a fact-based look at a sport. Miguel remains an endearing protagonist throughout--and at a far deeper level than the film's initial set-up leads us to expect. By the end of the film, he's become a complex man (I'll leave it at that in an effort to not give too much away).

Just as critical to the Miguel character as Boden and Fleck's assured writing and direction is Algenis Perez Soto's performance. A non-actor the filmmakers found playing baseball in the D.R., Soto is a natural, handling the comedic and dramatic material concerning his character's misadventures in America just as well as he does the baseball passages. Boden and Fleck were right to choose him because his work lends a fresh, unpretentious feel you can't get from someone who has the expressed intent of studying a character. Sugar never comes across so naturalistically that it imitates a documentary--that would defeat the movie's purpose of toying with the payoff of a traditional premise--but it certainly seems realistic. In fact, the only time the movie feels forced is when Fleck and Boden interject with attempts to artificially relitivize the material. In one scene, a Barack Obama magnet appears on Miguel's Iowa caretakers' refrigerator--totally unnecessary, if prophetic--and in another Spike Lee's Katrina doc When the Levees Broke plays on the TV in the background. Sugar would have been better off without these gratuitous additions: it is otherwise a heartfelt, sharply focused, and thought-provoking look at a person who even die-hard baseball fans may have never even considered. 3-1/2 Buckets out of 4.

Finishing off the day was the AFI's excellent tribute to Danny Boyle, which concluded with a screening of his latest film, Slumdog Millionaire. Click here to read my praise-filled review on the Bucket Reviews main site.