Jim's Film Festival Diary for Saturday, April 1st

The Last Western:
Pioneertown is a small town near Los Angeles, at the edge of the Mojave Desert, built by Gene Autry and Roy Rogers in 1946. It was made to film Westerns (both TV shows and films), but it's become something more and less than that. When the age of the pure Western was over, and films where good fought evil out in the desert in stark black and white disappeared from movie screens, real people stuck around and moved into the fake houses to live there. Pioneertown is now like the town that time forgot: a washed-up place full of washed-up people. Well, almost. There's definitely a spark of life left in the people and the place yet. As one citizen interviewed put it, the town is ossified, fossilized, and calcified, but not quite dead yet. The people still hanging around there are amazing characters. There's the alcoholic blues singer named Buzz, in trouble with the law all his life, and living now with his sassy and hilarious mother, who's slowly succumbing to Alzheimers. Then there's the crazy, religious, preservationist ex-flower girl who writes and sings her own songs, and seems to hold about equal reverence for Jesus and her former employer, Bob Hope. And there's also Dallas, a rinky-tink piano player and would-be Hollywood star and beauty queen, whose high water mark was appearing near the end of one Western movie, for about a minute. All of these folks and more live in the town, and every one of them is fascinating, funny, sad, and a little bit strange. It would have been almost impossible to make a bad documentary about this place and these people, and director and Philly native Chris Deaux indeed does not. The Last Western is about an era gone and the people still living there anyway. Hopefully you'll be able to catch it on DVD soon.
My festival rating: Very Good

The Sun:
Let me preface my review of this film by pointing out in my defense that I really enjoyed Russian Ark, another recent film by the director, critically acclaimed Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov. Ark was an amazing technical and artistic achievement. I'm also in general a fan of long, boring Russian films - I love Andrei Tarkovsky, and list his Andrei Rublev amongst my favorite films. But even I couldn't stand The Sun. It is achingly, painfully, agonizingly boring. It is possibly the most boring film I've ever seen. I could clearly hear one or more audience members snoring during the screening, and I seriously couldn't blame them. I considered walking out of the film multiple times.

And on the face of it, The Sun sounds like an interesting movie. It's set in 1945, as WWII is ending, and centers on Emperor Hirohito and his ultimate decision, after the atom bombs were dropped, to surrender (it also covers a few odd, strained interactions between Hirohito and the American General, MacArthur). To the Japanese, and to the Emperor himself, this was an incredibly shaming and crushing moment, while at the same time a wonderful moment, as it brought peace and saved millions of lives. But nearly all of the drama and power of this story is sucked away by Sokurov's incredibly slow pacing, and incredibly dull and drab plot and settings. We hear the Emperor's rather empty schedule for the day (which includes a nap, writing a letter, and studying marine biology), and then watch it play out almost exactly as described to us in agonizing detail, and in what feels like real time. Also, admittedly the Emperor must have been a strange and different man, living so isolated and encased in endless ritual, but nearly everyone in the film (including MacArthur) is so odd (in speech and manner) as to seem utterly inhuman and alien, which is completely off-putting and makes it very difficult to understand or sympathize with any of the characters. Worse, the Emperor has a strange facial tic that causes his mouth and lips to be constantly in motion. Whether this is accurate to history or not, it was so distracting and annoying to me that I found it almost impossible to pay attention to what little was actually going on.

I found myself unable to give the film the lowest rating (Poor), probably because of the very end of it, which actually did have some real emotional impact. But I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
My festival rating: Fair

Shadowboxer:
The introduction of the Philadelphia premier of Shadowboxer was a Philly lovefest. The phrase "Philadelphia rocks!" and variations thereof was repeated quite a lot. Producer and director Lee Daniels (who also produced Monster's Ball and The Woodsman) is a native son, after all, and much of the movie was also filmed in the area; you'll see the good old Septa R7 rolling by multiple times. Daniels himself was on-hand for the premier, as were various investors, actors, and family members, so it was a pretty appreciative crowd throughout. Luckily they had a pretty good film to be appreciative of. Shadowboxer is the story of a duo of hired killers (played by Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding, Jr.) who end up not executing a target one night when Mirren's character discovers the woman is pregnant and is about to give birth. Danger and excitement ensues. Despite this familiar-sounding plot, the film goes in directions you might not expect and actually tackles, with some power and finesse, some pretty heavy issues. It's also full of non-traditional characters and relationships. There's lots of sex and killing, and a seriously messed up cycle of violence going on, but there's also a wounded, beating heart at the center of it all. It has what's perhaps technically a happy Hollywood ending, but which still leaves you feeling uneasy in a satisfying way. Everybody is not going to be all right. Because life is like that.
My festival rating: Very Good

Image via the DIY Walk of Fame at Boutell.com