Films: Like A Shooting Star, Stuck, The Edge of Heaven

Future Screenings: There are no future screenings for any of the three films.

Most of the time I lead the free and easy lifestyle of a law student preparing for the bar exam (in July), but then the film festival rolls around and my life suddenly gets stressful. It’s hard to get together with friends, at least with those who aren’t willing to meet for a hurried cup of coffee in between Ritz East Theater One and Ritz East Theater Two on a Tuesday afternoon and hear my complaints about the so-called film that was really shown on projected DVD, right before I express surprise that they don’t have a settled opinion of Aleksandr Sukurov, who is only one of the most important figures in contemporary world cinema. I think this goes to show that my friends are very self-involved.

Like A Shooting Star (1967)
For years, the output of Japan’s Nikkatsu Studio was represented in America solely by several films directed by Seijun Suzuki, including Tokyo Drifter, Youth of the Beast, and others, which wormed their way into the consciousness of video-store geeks everywhere (including the ur-geek, Quentin Tarantino, who referenced both movies mentioned above in Reservoir Dogs). Like A Shooting Star, which doubles as part of a Nikkatsu Studio retrospective working its way across the country, can’t claim the same level of stylization as a Suzuki movie, and the yakuza-in-exile story doesn’t have a lot of surprises (read that title again).

However, writer/director Toshio Masuda (Tora! Tora! Tora!) clearly knows what he’s about, marrying clever dialogue with a sly choreography that gives otherwise unremarkable conversations a distinct erotic charge. (Thus, when some of the characters literally start dancing, as seen here, it’s less of a gimmick than you might suppose.) It may not be as sui generis as a Suzuki movie, but Like A Shooting Star feels very much ahead of its time, a tragicomic riff on yakuza movies that would fit comfortably alongside movies like Miller’s Crossing or Jackie Brown.
Festival rating: Very Good.

Stuck
Basically the Chante Mallard case done up as (very) dark comedy, Stuck makes the victim about as resilient as your average slasher movie villain three sequels into the franchise and the driver about as competent and sound-of-mind as your average slasher-movie victim three sequ… well, you get the idea. It’s not the slickest production the festival has ever seen, or the most subtle, but Stuck taps into a vein of deeply uncomfortable humor that few others can even find. Over the next few days, you’ll no doubt be able to identify those in the audience on Saturday when they plaintively moan, “Why are you doing this to me?” and then start giggling uncontrollably. (Or perhaps that’ll just be me.)
Festival rating: Very Good.

The Edge of Heaven
Fatih Akin made a minor splash with his last dramatic feature, Head-On, a punk-influenced take on disaffected Turkish immigrants living in Germany that managed to impress many critics despite a third act that evinced all the raucous, anarchic energy of Nancy Reagan. The Edge of Heaven finds him in Just-Say-No mode the entire time, with the same basic punch line: two acts (helpfully delineated by a title card that announces that a major character will die) of narrative economy, briskly establishing the disparate characters in a simple, expressive way that puts rivals like Crash or Babel to shame, followed by a third act (entitled "The Edge of Heaven") that sinks like a stone. Events that would have been implied just twenty minutes before now require a laborious set-up, so that you grasp the importance of what you’ve just seen. Someday, though, he’ll learn how to make a movie good all the way through, and that will be something to see.
Festival rating: Good

Image Credit: Flickr user pedrosimoes7