Films: Baghead, In a Dream, The Pixar Story, The Deal, American Teen, Heavy Metal in Baghdad, Deadline U.S.A., Dangerous Parking

Future Screenings: Baghead - no future screenings
In a Dream - Monday, 4/14, 7PM at The Ritz East
The Pixar Story - no future screenings
The Deal - no future screenings
American Teen - no future screenings
Heavy Metal in Baghdad - Thursday, 4/10, 7:15PM at International House
Deadline U.S.A. - TODAY, Monday, 4/7, 2:30PM at The Bridge
Dangerous Parking - Saturday, 4/12, 5PM at The Ritz Five

Just to get this out in the open, in case anyone's missed it (we don't exactly keep it a secret): Ross is Editor Jill's boyfriend. Which means, obviously, that Editor Jill is Ross's girlfriend. And while we're not completely inseparable, we did end up seeing several films together this weekend. And when we see things together, we talk about them, and we usually agree. (Two Libras. Go figure.) So, rather than making you read, or give up reading, two nearly identical sets of reviews, we decided to pool our collective thoughts into one set of diaries for the weekend. The screenings we saw alone (see? we can be separated!) are denoted at the top of the review and written in first person singular. All other reviews came from both of us and are written, not in the standard Gothamist royal "we," but rather in a very literal plural.

Baghead
What do you get when you try to combine elements of comedy (four aspiring actors with all sorts of relationship drama among them trying to write a script for themselves to star in) with horror (secluded cabin in the woods and paranoia galore)? Unfortunately, a movie that is neither particularly funny nor particularly scary. Throw in a "surprise" ending that both of us figured out a good 10 minutes before the "twist" is revealed (and wondered how we didn't figure it out sooner), and you have a recipe for complete disappointment. Oh, and the Blair Witch-style handheld camera work was unnecessarily distracting. In movies that use that style of filming, it's understood that it's a pseudo-documentary, where one of the characters in the film is actually using the camera. That's not the case with most of Baghead, so it just came across as terribly amateurish. The film has about three good laughs in it, and one good scare. While those numbers might suffice for a 30-minute short, it's nowhere near enough to carry an 80-minute feature. Not the most auspicious start to our festival.
Festival Rating: Fair

In a Dream (Jill only)
I know that when my family starts to fall apart—Mom and Dad splitting up, brother going to rehab—I grab a friend, take out my mini-DV cam and film the whole thing. Actually, that's not what I do at all, but it is what Jeremiah Zagar, son of Philadelphia mural artist Isaiah Zagar did. Which actually makes you feel really kind of uncomfortable watching In a Dream, especially considering how transparent and self-conscious the younger Zagar is about his involvement with his subjects, playing voicemails left him by his father and allowing both his father and his mother, Julia, to talk about his childhood (although they spend more time on his brother, Ezekiel's). But if you allow yourself to transcend your discomfort, which I eventually did, you find yourself watching a beautiful, moving documentary about a talented, troubled artist and his family. Zagar's murals—which I'd heard of and seen long before moving to Philadelphia—take visual, and sometimes topical, precedence in the film and prove breathtaking on the big screen. Without these, Zagar's obsession would seem silly and selfish; with them, we are left with a character who is, if not inherently sympathetic or likable, at the very least relateable. We all have our passions, but we usually restrain them. Isaiah Zagar's passions run over, completely unrestrainable, and although they sometimes prove self-destructive, there's a little bit of me that wishes I could be so free.
Festival Rating: Very Good to Excellent
Update: In a Dream was just awarded the Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in North Carolina. Congratulations to the filmmakers.

The Pixar Story
We're both big fans of the Pixar movies (Jill will proudly tell you that she has seen more of than than Ross), so how could we pass up a documentary about the company that created them? We couldn't, and that turned out to be a pretty wise decision. The Pixar Story is a wonderfully informative and beautifully edited film from documentarian Leslie Iwerks that does a great job at explaining the genesis of a beloved company, including interviews with everyone who was there, even before the beginning. Clips from Pixar features and shorts are also liberally sprinkled throughout the film, which caused Jill to lean over to Ross and Editor Jim (who was also at the screening) and ask: "Why can't I stop smiling?" (She did, but only because they showed the "When She Loved Me" scene from Toy Story 2, and that always makes her cry.) The documentary wasn't faultless—Pixar's protracted contract negotiations with Disney, which partly contributed to former Disney C.E.O. Michael Eisner's dismissal, is hardly touched upon—nor was it especially even-handed in its treatment of the company, but it was well-executed, fun, gave the audience an appreciation of just how much an overnight success Pixar wasn't, and it deserved a much fuller audience than it had at the screening we attended.
Festival Rating: Very Good to Excellent

The Deal
"The difference between an independent film and a studio film," William H. Macy told the audience after his latest film, The Deal, was screened, "all comes down to who loses money if the film flops. If it's a studio film, it's a business. But if it's an indie film, it's people. So if this movie doesn't do well, there are a lot of people who will be losing money." It was an interesting point to bring up after everyone in the audience had just watched a film that dealt largely with financing a major studio movie. That may sound dry, or pretentious, but in reality it was a behind-the-scenes comedy that featured, along with Macy (who also co-wrote the screenplay), LL Cool J, Meg Ryan, Elliott Gould, Jason Ritter, and Ross's newest lady crush, Fiona Glascott. The cast here is not the problem, although Meg Ryan's skin has now been pulled so tightly that she looks like she's made of plasticine and her haircut in the film was pretty awful. In fact, Macy is his usual ironically charming self, Elliott Gould as Rabbi Elliott Gould delivered his one-liners with comedic ease, and LL Cool J was nothing short of hilarious. (Ross, Jill, and Angela all ended up at the same screening, along with Angela's fiancee, and we passed a few hours at Fergie's after the film doing little more than quoting the film.) But all the talent and funny lines couldn't save The Deal entirely: there were a few plot holes as big as the Grand Canyon that made it seem that the film was edited a bit too much for length, and a certain understanding of the movie business (specifically movie financing) is required to get some of the jokes. We have no problem with smart people's humor, but at times it could get almost alienating, transforming a movie that had the potential to be absolutely hilarious into a movie that sometimes only made two people in the sold-out Prince laugh. Did it redeem itself in the end? Mostly. But our disappointment kept us from giving it the high score we so wanted it to deserve.
Festival Rating: Good

American Teen
We weren't exactly sure what to expect when we walked into American Teen. We'd overheard some festivalgoers who'd seen an earlier screening of the movie and absolutely hated it. But we tried to remain cautiously optimistic about the film, and fortunately, our optimism was rewarded. But we could understand why people might have a problem with the film. For a movie billed as a "documentary," parts of it come across as creatively edited, if not outrightly staged. And the characters are the teen film archetypes we've all come to know through both MTV and real life: the dreamer artist, the jock seeking a college athletic scholarship because his family can't afford to pay for school, the "it" girl who is simultaneously deeper and shallower than you'd think at first pass, the band geek who feels that he needs to find a girlfriend to validate his existence. Within the first ten minutes of the film, you can guess where each of these characters is going to end up, so don't expect to be surprised. But what makes American Teen worthwhile is that, even if everyone in the theater knew where each of the teens was going to end up, the teens themselves didn't, and watching them choose their paths (or come to terms with the inevitable, depending on your perspective) is a process that held our interest for the full time of the movie. We don't think the film was staged; there's something a little too organic about it, things that made us remember our own high school experiences a bit too much, for it to be a fraud. But we don't think it can really be called a documentary in the truest form, as the whole thing fits together just a little too nicely. (For example, once the artist dreamer talked in her opening interview about how the only person in the world who understood her was her boyfriend, with whom she was so deeply in love, everyone in the theater knew the breakup was coming within the next few minutes.) But for its faults, American Teen rung true enough that we enjoyed every minute of it—even when it forced us to think about our own high school experiences.
Festival rating: Very Good

Heavy Metal in Baghdad (Ross only)
Heavy Metal in Baghdad is arguably mistitled. At least, its title might lead you to believe it's about something other, and less, than it really is. The film is a documentary about Acrassicauda (MySpace), an Iraqi heavy metal band who, from 2001 to 2006, played roughly a half dozen concerts. At first, they couldn't, or didn't, play because of the limitations put on music by Saddam Hussein's regime. After the invasion of Iraq, they couldn't play because of heightened security and the possibility of being killed for playing music that was considered western and/or Satanic. But the power of Heavy Metal in Baghdad is that it really isn't about heavy metal music; the music is the pivot point for telling the story of four young Iraqi men dealing with the chaos around them. It's about a group of young men who were neither pro-Saddam nor anti-Saddam; they'd just learned to live with the regime, and now they don't know what to make of their country. It's also about the difficulties in telling Acrassicauda's story faced by filmmakers Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti of Vice Magazine. It's about how Baghdad is the heavy metal of the world: tempestuous, loud, and explosive (literally). And it's about the largely untold story of Iraqi refugees, over two million of whom have fled the country for Syria, Jordan, and other neighboring Arab countries, while the United States has accepted fewer than five hundred Iraqi immigrants. The film is moving and infuriating, and well worth ninety minutes of your time, even if you don't care at all about heavy metal.
Festival rating: Excellent

Deadline U.S.A. (Jill only)
The purpose of a film festival, one assumes, is to screen new films from around the world that you may not ever be able to see again. Well yes—minus, perhaps, the word "new." Historically, at least during our Festival, a few obscure or rare gems from days gone by make it to the screen, and in my humble opinion, there should be more. Supporting evidence of this is the excellent Humphrey Bogart film noir/newspaper movie, Deadline U.S.A., whose cast also includes Ethel Barrymore, Kim Hunter, Ed Begley, and Martin Begel. The film was written and directed by Richard Brooks (who, along with Barrymore and Begel, make this a film with deep Philadelphia roots), probably better known for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, The Professionals, Elmer Gantry, and the film adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Brooks' writing and direction here are both nothing short of outstanding: punchy dialogue and punches thrown, all with the kind of quick timing that's sorely lacking in most movies today. Bogart plays the same character he plays in most of his films: jaded, charming, and the perfect mixture of smart and streetwise, wearing his heart on his sleeve but unable to give it completely. This isn't your traditional noir film. There are no confrontations in dark alleys, no mysterious telephone calls, and the violence is kept mostly offscreen. But there's a very clear villain and a very clear hero here, only instead of a damsel in distress, there's a newspaper for sale and a city to make straight again after some election tampering. (Hey, come to think of it, they could make that same movie now—only it might be a documentary.) Ultimately, it's a fabulous film that doesn't come across as nearly as dated as many other noir films do, but unfortunately, there's very little chance of you ever getting to see it. The film has never been released on VHS or DVD, and it doesn't appear that there are any plans to do so in the future. But it's an important film, deserving of attention, and perhaps someday we'll be able to pick up copies of our own at Best Buy—for now, though, play hooky and catch the 2:30 screening this afternoon.
Festival Rating: Excellent

Dangerous Parking
Since Peter Howitt's pretty wonderful writing and directorial debut, 1998's Sliding Doors, he's done, well, let's just throw it out there, crap. Maybe it's just us, but Laws of Attraction (which had been released twice the previous year as Down with Love and Intolerable Cruelty) did nothing for us, and we couldn't even bring ourselves to sit through all of Johnny English or any of Antitrust. Fortunately, after a ten-year should-have-been hiatus, Howitt reclaims his artistic voice with Dangerous Parking, a film based on the late Stuart Browne's novel of the same name. The festival guide writeup of the movie, which calls it a "dark comic tale of addiction," is a little bit misleading. The first two-thirds of the film are just that, but after its protagonist, indie film director Noah Arkwright (wonderfully played by Howitt himself), finally (mostly) kicks his addiction, it becomes a film about facing mortality, the "rocks" in people's lives that they cling to when times get difficult, and embracing second (and third and fourth) chances to get it right. Dangerous Parking starts out very funny, and becomes very serious before it's over, but it progresses in such a way that makes sense. We appreciated the film's structure inasmuch as Howitt, as he did in Sliding Doors, played with the concept of time, telling his story in the early part of the film using a jumbled chronology with numerous effects replicating substance-induced hallucinations. Then, as Noah gets clean, the chronology and cinematography both become more linear. We think that some people will find the movie to be disjointed, suffering from a bit of the cinematic equivalent of multiple personality disorder. But in the context of Noah Arkwright's world, it made perfect sense to us. In the end, Dangerous Parking was less comedic, but no less satisfying, than we'd hoped it would be.
Festival rating: Very Good

Image via Flickr user pedrosimoes7.