Month in Review - April 2012

For me, April is always dominated by the ten days of the Florida Film Festival. I've written at some length about it already, so I won't expound anymore than to merely say it is a simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting week-and-a-half of movie watching. I watched some great movies, met a couple of very nice filmmakers, and experienced it for the first time as a somewhat legitimate member of the press.

  

2012 Florida Film Festival - Highlights, Day 7-10

Thursday:

Documentary as activism isn't new to the festival (representatives from Amnesty International were in attendance of the Give Up Tomorrow screening earlier in the week, for example). Films traveling a festival circuit is certainly a way to create awareness. This, perhaps serendipitously, is the case with Girl Model. The film fundamentally follows the stories of two people: Nadya, a 14-year-old, Siberian girl who is plucked from a gaggle of other young Russian girls that are on display on stage to be hired as Japanese ad models; and Ashley, herself a former model a decade or so ago, who now is well-employed as a scout choosing girls like Nadya.

2012 Florida Film Festival - Highlights, Day 6

Two more movies on Wednesday that exist on opposite ends of the spectrum, Kid-Thing from FFF regulars the Zellner Brothers and the biopic, The Lady, from popular French director, Luc Besson.

The Lady follows the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese expatriate living with her husband and two kids in London, suddenly becoming the symbolic and political leader of a burgeoning democratic movement in her home country. The movie is framed by two separate events: the assassination of Suu's father, Aung San, who himself was instrumental in bringing independence and democracy to Burma; and the cancer diagnosis of her British husband, Michael Aris.

And I think this is part of the failure of this movie. By framing Suu's story as both a political one and a personal one, it seems to not do real justice to either. Michelle Yeoh as Suu and David Thewlis as Michael are very good here and do their best to convey their support for each other as longtime partners. But the real-life events of the couple being separated for years while she was in exile in Burma and the movie's decision to not include their courtship and instead jump into their relationship well after their kids had been born doesn't give us any connection to their connection. But the moments of Michael and Suu having protracted phone conversations (don't get me started on how many times someone says, "Hello? Are you there?" followed by a dial tone) and pining to be with each other also take up time that could be better utilized explaining her politics or showing how she was able to mobilize her significant supporters.

If The Lady does little to surpass the conventions of the standard biopic, Kid-Thing complies no ideas of convention. Throughout the early moments I was ready to dismiss the meandering story of Annie, a ruthlessly delinquent child, living on a farm with her mostly inattentive father. But amongst stealing from convenience stores, throwing uncooked biscuit dough at passing cars, and shooting dead cows with paintballs, a potentially tragic discovery gives her at least some semblance of direction. The Zellner's perfectly calibrated pacing and tone matches a great performance by newcomer Sydney Aguirre. The movie languishes in its poor rural setting, but it always knows where it's going. And by that final frame, Kid-Thing just hits the most perfect note.

2012 Florida Film Festival - Highlights, Day 4 & 5

The beginning of the week often provides a brief respite from the busy weekend of movies at the start of the festival and Monday and Tuesday were no different, as I attended only three screenings--all features--during that time. Two of those movies, Dog Years and The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best, were not only among the best of the fest so far, but also emblematic of what I think this festival and probably many others represent.

DOG YEARS

2012 Florida Film Festival - Highlights, Day 3

Sunday's Day 3 was a relatively protracted day of screenings, watching only two feature documentaries along with their accompanying documentary shorts. If part of the allure of film festivals is to experience a wide variety of movies, then a natural result of that is being able to experience vastly different cultures. And the two documentary features I screened Sunday--in widely disparate ways--were eye-opening looks at places and situations that exist on the other side of world.

THE JOSEPH SZABO PROJECT

2012 Florida Film Festival - Highlights, Day 2

Day 2, which is actually the first full day of the Florida Film Festival, always (ALWAYS, I tell you!) seems to begin not with a bang, but with a stutter. Technical difficulties at the makeshift tickets booths outside the Regal screenings generally mark the beginning of each year's festival before things settle down as the week progresses.

In any case, the two Saturdays are usually the busiest days for me during the festival, as I normally try to fit in 5 or 6 screenings. I (and my sister, who joined me for the entirety of Day 2) opted for only five this time, skipping one of our scheduled movies for something I like to call dinner.

Khen Shalem's THE OTHER SIDE

2012 Florida Film Festival - A Brief Preview

The arrival of spring is usually one I greet with dread. Plants in bloom make my sinuses go "boom". The Florida heat is beginning to rear its ugly head and this past winter--or should I say "winter"--was almost nonexistent. But another April means another Florida Film Festival. And another week-plus of movie watching and hopping from screen to screen or from theater to theater and sneaking in a meal in between films (or during films) and more movie watching.

Month In Review: March 2012

 

In a new, hopefully regular feature here, I'll be briefly writing about things I've seen over the past month but didn't get a chance to discuss in longer form. Here's what I watched in March.

Marchons! Marchons!

Last week marked the 70th anniversary of that obscure, little movie called Casablanca. In honor of such an occasion, Turner Classic Movies presented a special screening of the movie in theaters all across the country. At least in my area, the theaters showing the movie had two screenings, 2 pm and 7 pm. I attended the matinee screening and, somewhat surprisingly for a early Wednesday afternoon, the theater was packed. Unsurprisingly, that audience skewed much older than me. But peppered in the crowd were some younger folk and some who hadn't yet seen the film. (The girl next to me, for instance, audibly gasped when Ilsa brandished a gun in Rick's upstairs quarters.)

As prelude to the movie, TCM's Robert Osborne hosted about a 15-20 minute documentary discussing the legacy of the Michael Curtiz film. A doc like that is fine when randomly on TV or as a supplement on a DVD, but when it precedes the actual movie, it dilutes its power. So much of it consisted of scenes from the movie that I felt as if I were witnessing the movie pass before me instead of watching it, even though that act was still to come.

In any case, the movie started with nary a hitch. Sure the much older, shabbily dressed gentleman two seats away from me burped several times during the screening. And when I say burp, I don't mean one of those things you do as you put your hand to your mouth and silently let out a breath. These were belches, audible certainly to those other than myself, especially to the four elderly women sitting right next to him. Outside of that, the only other distractions came from the faint whispers of those reciting the more quotable lines of the film. I could hear the woman in front of me say (along with Bogey), "We'll always have Paris," then (not with Bogey), "Awwwww!"

Duplass, who zooms his camera.

In the Duplass brothers' Jeff, Who Lives at Home, Jeff (Jason Segel), who--more accurately--lives in his mother's basement, is presented as your typical slacker. Or at least your typical movie slacker. He's a couch potato, he loves his bong, and a pair of shorts and a hoodie is his sartorial preference. He also believes in signs. Or should I say he believes in Signs, the 2002 movie starring Mel Gibson. The M. Night Shymalan film gets Jeff thinking. Thinking that everything happens for a reason. That something great is his destiny. That everything is connected. That the wrong-number phone call he gets in the basement for somebody named Kevin is a sign that he must follow the first "Kevin" he sees into a bad neighborhood and play a pick-up basketball game with him.