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.

AFI Fest 2008: Day Seven

I approached Day Seven of AFI Fest feeling fresh and ready to go after having skipped two days to watch the election unfold. What a fitting way, I thought, to see two films that received solid reputations and strong buzz out of other festivals. The result, once again, was that one fell short of expectations and one lived up to them.

Ji-woon Kim’s The Good, the Bad, and the Weird is a lively throwback to Sergio Leone Westerns—hence the title spin-off—and early martial-arts films. The movie is beautifully photographed and boasts an invigorating sense of adrenaline, but it’s also totally disposable. Given its outrageous-seeming 130 minute-running-time, I am tempted to say that many of The Good, the Bad, and the Weird’s problems that stem from a lack of substance could have been solved had director Kim and editor Nam Na-Young chopped it down by 45 minutes. But never once during the film did I feel as though I was bored—in fact, my senses were challenged with incredible “how did they do that?” imagery every step of the way—so I can’t say that the length was an issue. Instead, I think Kim has attempted to make the type of pulpy, substance-less action-film that only works when the director’s name starts with Quen- and ends with –tin Tarantino.

The premise is even simpler than that of the usual Tarantino film: a mysterious map is being carried and dozens of assassins are vying to steal it because of the treasure it may lead to. The competition is eventually whittled down to three, as you may have guessed: the good guy, the bad guy, and the weird guy. Lots of sweeping shots ensue. There’s a breathtaking sequence early on in which map-hunters are violently knocked off by each other, one at a time. There’s another particularly striking scene that results from a prominent character being kidnapped. Notice that I’m trying to keep the details to a minimum. Truth is: if I were to describe the best scenes in The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, then I would be robbing potential viewers of most of the movie’s charms, which are purely visual in nature. Without its images and its energy, the movie would be nothing. Whereas Tarantino’s Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction achieved substantial heft through well-written dialogue and cultural-commentary, Kim’s effort can only boast pretty pictures. Ultimately, The Good, the Bad, and the Weird, while not without its charms and entertainment-value, is only a motion picture in that indeed consists of moving pictures. 2 Buckets out of 4.

Next up was something much better.

While writer/director James Gray’s knack for crafting distinct moods and tones was readily apparent in last year’s We Own the Night, I would’ve never guessed from watching that dirty-cop flick that Two Lovers would be the poignant experience that it is. Told from the distant, yet still intimate perspective of the introverted, yet still charismatic Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), who rebounds from a failed engagement by falling in love with two different women (Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw), the movie is erotic and unpredictable—often at the same time.

The titular lovers that Leonard finds himself almost uncontrollably pursuing couldn’t be more different: Sandra (Shaw) is the daughter of a Jewish businessman working to merge his dry-cleaning company with Leonard’s father’s and Michelle (Paltrow) is the drug-addled upstairs-neighbor who’s dating a married corporate-hack but has a subconscious need for chaos that drives her to Leonard. Leonard is trapped in the middle of the two, still not fully recovered from his failed previous relationship and thus allowing the whims of the two women—Sandra is obsessed with him and Michelle texts him late at night when she feels lustful—to influence his own. And despite the fact that Leonard is rather reserved through it all, the viewer feels a deep bond with him – his frustration, his passion, his confusion, his regret, his longing. All the while, he experiences a quietly complex relationship with his parents (Moni Moshonov and Isabella Rossellini), who are the ones who first introduce him to Sandra and would like to see him marry her but silently realize that Michelle is electrifying his existence.

Much of the movie’s poignancy rests in the performances of Phoenix, who crafts a multi-dimensional man out of a sparingly written character, and Paltrow and Shaw, both of whom lure the viewer in just as they do Leonard. But all of the emotions are anchored by Gray’s deft direction. Structurally, Two Lovers is more complex than its simple love-triangle might let on; each time Leonard shifts back and forth between the two women, substantive character-development is achieved. The structure also maintains a sense of suspense that enhances the story: because the viewer doesn’t know which of the two Leonard will ultimately be with—if he ends up with anyone at all—they are able to feel the frustration and passion involved in his constantly switching mindset. Gray also deserves credit for co-writing the movie’s screenplay with Ric Menello, but it’s the way that Two Lovers is assembled that makes it the stirring picture it is. Great acting and filmmaking make this one a must-see. 3-1/2 Buckets out of 4.

AFI Fest 2008: Day Nine, Part 1

I'm almost caught up on festival coverage--only Days Seven and Eight to go--but before I do that, I'd like to highlight yet another film I saw in advance of the festival that has its premiere tonight. What makes this one different from the pack? It's free to attend.

Rest assured: that The World We Want is showing for free is not a reflection of its quality. This is a cleverly-structured and eye-opening (if not enlightening) documentary on the various problems the world faces, always involving and never preachy.

The movie works well because it's told from the perspective of teenagers trying to tackle world-problems through a universal school project. In the project, 14-to-16-year-old students work to enact solutions for problems plaguing their local communities. Director Patrick Davidson and crew follow the finalists of the project, who will share their work in Washington D.C. and be judged for a winning-prize. Some particularly memorable examples include Americans who try to rid school lunches of saturated fats, Russians who talk to government officials to ban casinos in Samara, Indians who work to preserve and light tourist-attraction landmarks near their school, and Indonesians who protest the harsh taxation of local silversmiths.

From the teenager's point of view, all of these issues are boiled down to the essentials and, as a result, earn the viewer's sympathies easily. And to see young people attempting to enact reform on, say, mob-controlled casinos or taxation of silversmiths, is something remarkable. The audience learns about some little-known local problems and becomes involved in the cast of characters working to solve them in the process.

The picture also functions as a nice travelogue, with the filmmakers not only visiting finalists in the aforementioned countries, but also those in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Jordan, and Senegal. The photography is surpisingly aesthetically-pleasing given that the movie was shot on an HD-camera for what was presumably a shoestring budget. And it's all well-assmbled by director Davidson, who brings both heart and awareness to the issues. 3 Buckets out of 4; screens tonight, Sat., Nov. 8 at the Mann Chinese 6 at 7 p.m.

AFI Fest 2008: Day Four, Part 2

Day Five of AFI Fest 2008 represented a new opportunity at the festival for me: the ability to see films on weekdays. Last year, I was still going to school full-time in San Diego, so I was only able to catch weekend programming. While I would not take advantage of Tuesday or Wednesday’s line-ups due to my fixation on the presidential election, it was nice to be able to see a few selections on Monday and Thursday.

The day before a black man would become the President elect of the United States, I saw Anthony Fabian’s Skin, the true story of a South African woman named Sandra Liang (Sophie Okonedo) who was denied the rights her white parents and brother enjoyed because she was born with brown skin acquired from generations-old genes. Think of the opposite of the Anthony Hopkins character in The Human Stain, only living in a culture where being black meant being oppressed.

The most interesting part of Skin is not the rare genetic inheritance that long pained the life of its protagonist. Instead, it’s how the people around Sandra respond to her skin color. After a short flash-forward in time, the viewer is first introduced to Sandra when she is a young girl (played by Ella Ramangwane). Her parents are enrolling her in the same whites-only school as her older brother. Sandra is allowed to attend despite an apprehensive administration, but she is soon kicked out when a racist teacher makes up a reason to beat and boot her, causing her father (Sam Neill) to engage in battle with the government over her official race. One would think he’d become a tolerant guy because of the ensuing hardships, but he doesn’t at all. When Sandra begins to date his general store’s black supplier, her father immediately tries to end it because of the man’s race. In other words: he thinks it’s a-OK to persecute blacks, just not his black-appearing daughter because she has white parents. And the chaos doesn’t stop there. After Sandra marries the man and shuns her family as a result, he turns out to be abusive, suggesting that she was subconsciously attracted to him because he possessed the very same tragically violent qualities embodied by her father.

While Skin tells a remarkable story drenched in painstaking themes about fate, it isn’t a remarkable film. This is primarily because storywriter/director Anthony Fabian sticks to a rote approach to his narrative. He embraces Hollywood Style to an unhealthy extent in that the film becomes stuck in the standard “true-story” mold and the characters are never explored in detail on stylistic or thematic levels. Fabian clearly chose a simple structure so that he could convey the true story factually—when introducing the film, he made sure to point out everything onscreen was true—but in doing so he robbed Skin of its emotional authenticity. In other words, Fabian invested so much of his attention in sticking to the facts that he didn’t have any time to flesh out his characters emotionally, meaning that they are not in fact entirely honest representations of real people because they do not reflect many of the emotions essential to the story. Had Fabian allowed his actors to reach a little bit more in their work—perhaps embellishing a bit, but discovering greater truths in the process—Skin would’ve been a better movie. (Given Sophie Okenedo’s previous performances, we all know that she especially could’ve turned a good lead performance into a tour-de-force had the movie’s style and structure provided her more room to roam.)

Alas, Skin is a lot like many of the other films that have been made about the human tragedies committed in Africa’s recent history, certainly not as inspired as the memorable ones. Viewers interested in the general subject-matter will do far better renting the Okonedo-starrer Hotel Rwanda or the also-South Africa-based Tsotsi instead.

2-1/2 Buckets out of 4.