Jim's Film Festival Diary for Saturday, April 5 & Sunday, April 6

Pistoleros
This is one of the films I was looking forward to the most this year. It's an homage to Spaghetti Westerns and Robert Rodriguez-style action films made by a Chilean-born, Danish-reared, first-time director named Shaky Gonzalez, and set in Copenhagen. That sounds insanely fun, right? And indeed, for the first 45 mintues or so, it is. A young man is writing a screenplay about a supposed urban legend that tells of a secret cache of money hidden somewhere nearby, money stolen by a rag-tag gang of criminals led by notorious bad-ass Frank Lowies. The writer/director—along with his pretty young producer—gets a meeting with somebody who knows, nearly firsthand, the story of Lowies and the money. As the story unfolds, we are introduced to an extremely colorful group of characters, many of whom end up fighting and killing each other.

The introduction of the Lowies character, in a scene that features him beating the crap out of about a dozen guys at the same time, is brilliant and hilarious, and there are many other fun and exciting sequences to come later on, and plenty of interesting characters. And for the Spaghetti Western fan there are many amusing references and allusions to watch out for: the character of Tuki, for instance, is similar in name, personality, and even physical behavior to Eli Wallach's Tuco from Sergio Leone's classic The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The climactic three-way showdown is also a clear reference to that same film. The camoflaged safe at the center of the heist reminds me very much of the camoflaged safe in For a Few Dollars More. The soundtrack obviously mimics Ennio Morricone's famous soundtracks for The Man with No Name films, especially The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

After Spaghetti Westerns, the genre the film owes the most to is the post-Pulp Fiction action movie. Much of the style, characterization, and construction of the movie comes out of that tradition. The story is told out of order, seemingly for no other reason than that's the way Tarantino did it. Sadly, as the film goes on, and on (at only 90 minutes, it still manages to be far too long), it becomes clear that although the director is a great lover of these other genres and movies, he is not a master of making them himself. A collection of references to other great movies does not necessarily a great movie make. The dialogue is never all that smart or interesting, and once you push all the stylish flourishes out of the way, the story isn't all that smart or interesting, either. By around the 50th minute, the creativity has really run out, and the film just drags slowly towards its end. A more tightly edited, faster paced version of the film would probably be much better, but even then it would still only be a pale shadow of the great masterpieces it attempts to imitate.
Festival rating: Fair

The Pixar Story
I suspected it would be pretty hard to screw up a documentary about the history of the amazing computer animation studio Pixar, and indeed this film is extremely informative, entertaining, funny, and even moving, despite some occasionally cheesy imagery and music cues. The story of Pixar is, after all, pretty high drama, with some surprising and complex plot twists. The relationship between Pixar and Disney is a particularly stormy and odd one, and I'd forgotten Pixar's connection to George Lucas and his production company's special effects department. To tell the full history of the Pixar studio, the movie has to reach further afield and further back in time than you might think, pulling in a bit of the history of animation and computer technology in general. It's also a very effective commercial for Pixar's movies; I already knew I loved their work, but at the end of this film, I wanted to run out and watch all their films again, as well as check out the few I've missed. It's really too bad there aren't any more screenings of this scheduled, but hopefully it'll end up in the festival favorites, and surely it will come to DVD some day.
Festival rating: Excellent

Like a Shooting Star
This unique Japanese action film from the late '60s takes as its major genre influences American film noir and the French New Wave. It's sassy, smart, weird, funny, and sexy, and I loved it. It's about a supremely cool, cold-blooded gangster named Goro who, in a brilliant and shocking opening sequence, casually ices a rival gang boss and is then forced to leave his life in Tokyo and go into hiding in Kobe. Trapped in a city he hates, he slouches and smokes, wanders and naps, bored and dreaming of returning to Tokyo—until one day the local criminals he's mixed in with eliminate a smuggler, and the man's beautiful, sophisticated fiance shows up from Tokyo to figure out what happened to him. Goro is instantly smitten with her and goes about seducing her in his own strange way. But a local cop is keeping a close eye on Goro, determined to catch him at something illegal, and a new assassin has come to town who might have his sights on Goro, as well.

The film is a rather odd mix of the silly and the serious—and the music and dance number that's dropped into the middle, right after a fight scene, is a bit puzzling, if also amusing—but somehow the movie synthesizes its varying tones and subjects into a succesful whole. It helps that the dialogue is incredibly clever, snappy, and sarcastic, and that the characters are complex and utterly fascinating. There's also plenty of action, a thrilling and twisted love affair, and a tense and engaging plot. They just don't make them like this anymore.
Festival rating: Very Good

Stuck
I have mixed feelings about Stuart Gordon. I simply love the first couple of his Re-Animator films, but when I saw one of the later installments at a recent festival, I really didn't enjoy it, and some of his other films I've found simply repulsive. Still, this, his latest film, has an interesting hook: it's actually based on a true story. It's the insane, horrifying case of the woman who hit a man with her car, got him lodged in her windshield, and then just drove home, parked her car in the garage, and left him trapped there to slowly die over a number of days. The story is so grotesque and ridiculous, you have to either laugh or cry, and Gordon chooses to laugh, turning his film adaptation into the blackest of black comedies. He opens with slow motion footage of old folks at a hospice taking their meds, with a gangster rap soundtrack in the background, and then introduces us to his two main characters: a young woman named Brandi (Mena Suvari) who works at the hospice, and the down-on-his-luck Tom (Stephen Rea—whose drooping, puppy dog face seems to have been made for playing down-on-their-luck characters like this one). Brandi is hoping for a promotion, and Tom is just hoping for anything at all to go right for him. In the space of less than one day, he gets kicked out of his apartment, screwed out of a chance at a job, and then kicked off the park bench he decided to sleep on, each time given a "choice" that isn't really a choice at all ("You can get out, or I can call the cops, it's your choice"). To put it simply, he's stuck. But, as we all know, he's about to get even more stuck. The tension of the film builds and builds as you watch these two characters hurtle toward their terrible, fateful meeting. Brandi gets drunk and high at a club and then drives off playing with her cell phone. Tom goes stumbling out of the park and across town, looking for another place to sleep. And then...

Well, you know. At first, at least some of Brandi's responses to the accident are understandable, but eventually she becomes an almost unbelievably cold and inhuman character. And at first Tom seems to be responding like a normal person as well, screaming and crying and praying and slowly dying—until he somehow acquires super strength and manages to drag himself out of the windshield, splint his leg, survive further attacks and injuries, and then even successfully fight back. In other words, the film gets a little ridiculous, especially near the end. But it remains unsettling, painfully funny, and extremely clever throughout. And even though it is a very dark film which spends most of its length showing us how incredibly selfish humans are, and how unwilling they are to take responsibility for their own actions, it does ultimately offer us hope by providing us with one decent, likable character. Sure, it's only one, but one is a start.
Festival rating: Very Good

Deadline U.S.A.
This black-and-white 1952 crime/noir/newspaper drama starring Humphrey Bogart is screening at the festival as part of NoirCon 2008. I had never heard of it before, which, arrogant film snob that I am, suggested to me that it wasn't worth hearing about, and that it would probably not be very good. But I went anyway, because, c'mon, it's a black-and-white 1952 crime/noir/newspaper drama starring Humphrey Bogart; I can't say no to that. And as it turns out, my arrogant film snobbish prejudice was completely unfounded. The film is brilliant, with a complex and fascinating story; heaps of incredibly intelligent, snappy dialogue; and an incredible cast full of well-known character actors. Bogart plays the editor of a newspaper that's about to get sold and shut down, but he and his staff resolve to go down fighting, and mobilize to take on the story of their lives: an exposé of a local crime boss that the law has so far been unable to touch. The film delves into the melodramatic and cheesy a few times, mostly during Bogey's passionate speeches on freedom of the press and the importance of newspapers, but the rest of it is pure brilliance. It's a truly thrilling classic of its era, and not to be missed.
Festival rating: Excellent

Phoebe in Wonderland
I really wasn't sure about this one at first, but as it went on, it drew me further and further in until I was so deeply emotionally invested in the characters and their reality that I believe I ended up crying more at this movie than perhaps any other movie I've ever seen. Which may not sound like a recommendation, but it is. The story is about a young girl named Phoebe Lichten (Elle Fanning) who is a little... different. She does and says inappropriate things sometimes, not because she wants to, but because she feels she has to. She also constantly performs rituals (like washing her hands a certain number of times, or jumping up and down the stairs in a certain way) in an effort to make things go her way, often hurting herself in the process. Her parents are both writers, but her mother Hillary (Felicity Huffman) stays home to look after Phoebe and her little sister, while her father (Bill Pullman) keeps busy elsewhere. Phoebe is deeply in love with the Alice stories (Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass), and, perhaps not so coincidentally, her mother is trying to write a book about them. But the constant pressures of taking care of her daughters, as well as perhaps some other internal fears, keep Hillary from her work, and Phoebe's increasing problems at school and in public take a toll on the whole family. Only when playing Alice in the school production of Alice in Wonderland, under the mostly hands-off direction of her unconventional drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson), does Phoebe find any joy in life, and any escape from the tensions of the dreaded normal world. But as Phoebe finds herself spiraling more and more out of her own control everywhere else, she and her family both seem headed for self-destruction.

The writer and first-time director of the film is native Philadelphian Daniel Barnz, and its his amazing writing and directing, coupled with the fantastic performances of all the actors involved (especially Fanning, Huffman, and Clarkson) that brings this story and its characters to life, vividly and believably. The dialogue feels extremely real, but is also carefully constructed to subtly convey Barnz's insights on learning to live with who you are. It's a very dramatic, emotional movie, but it never strays into melodrama, and although it does occasionally feel as if it's going to transform into a public service announcement about mental illness, it never quite does so. To put it simply, it's wonderful, and you should see it. Just remember to bring a hanky.
Festival rating: Excellent

Mirageman
This was another of my most anticipated movies at this year's festival, and like Pistoleros, it let me down a bit. It's the story of a young man named Marko with a terrible incident of violence in his past (very like the one that made Batman what he is), an incident that left his parents dead and his little brother scarred for life. He spends his days doing martial arts training and dropping by the hospital to watch his brother sit silently in his room, drawing horrific pictures of the tragedy that has destroyed him; he spends his nights working as a bouncer at a club. Then one evening he comes upon a home invasion in progress. With images of his own past flashing through his mind, he beats the criminals into unconsciousness and saves the women who were being attacked. One of them happens to be a beautiful, popular, local newscaster. She reports the story of her mysterious savior and hero, who appeared and disappeared like a mirage, on TV. Seeing this, and the incredibly positive effect the news story has on his little brother, Marko finds his purpose in life: to fight crime as the martial arts superhero Mirageman.

The film takes a refreshingly realistic look at the idea of the superhero, and is not afraid to show how ridiculous it really is. Marko has to take the bus around town, carry a change of clothes in a garbage bag, and sort through fake calls for help in his superhero e-mail account, which he advertises on a print-out that he leaves at the scenes of his heroism. When he finds some bad guys and retreats around the corner to change into his super outfit, we get to see the entire, hilariously difficult and time-consuming process. But as the movie goes on, Marko's missions get more dangerous and more serious, and the story dips dangerously towards melodrama.

Mirageman has plenty of exciting martial arts action, plenty of humor, and even some legitimately moving and effective drama. But ultimately it just got a bit too ridiculous for me.
Festival rating: Good

Image Credit: Flickr user pedrosimoes7