Let's Get DOWN with Some International Film
Only here, AI and subtitled film.

Don't you worry, there's an entire entry coming on the American Idol scandal, but instead today I thought I'd post my thoughts on the films from the SF International Film Festival.

My right leg has been numb for a week. I think I'm going to have a stroke.

King's Game
This is a Danish "thriller" that's not actually very thrilling, which isn't to say I didn't enjoy it. And in all honesty, the Danes may have a different definition of thrilling than I do. Anyway, the plot revolves around a Danish political journalist who's manipulated into being a pawn in a plot by which one politician will gain power at the expense of another one. Of course, the Danish journalist is good hearted and upstanding young man, he wants to correct his wrong and does some super sleuthing in order to uncover the true "evil" of the political machine. It works. It's a good movie. It's shot very, very dark and gray, like the Danes apparent emotional levels. I'm just saying -- remarkable lack of emoting going on in this movie on any level. It was a good way to kick off the movie viewing. I supported it.
58 -- Recommended

Film as a Subversive Art
It's a documentary on that guy who started Cinema 16 in New York in the 50's and later became the director of the New York film festival. I was so interested in the topic matter. I was all like, "Oh, subversive art-fuck film in NY and its impact on NY culture and the future of film. I can't wait to see this." That last sentence sounded sarcastic, but it wasn't. I should say at this point that I made it very clear that I had no interest in actually watching the horrid art-fuck short films that were shown at Cinema 16. But, to my horror, it was immediately announced that there would be a showing of four of said art-fuck films before the showing of the documentary. One of these was somewhat interesting. The other three had me cringing in my seat near tears. TEARS. They were all the obligatory fifties and sixties naked hippies dancing in nature films, including the ultra-obligatory childbirth film. As I shook in horror in my seat wondering if I was destined to spend my night dreaming of naked, fat, hippies dancing and birthing, I motivated myself by reminding myself that after this odd form of torture, the documentary looked promising. BUT NO. The documentary missed its mark. Amos Vogel is a cute old guy with a lot of interesting things to say, but the film maker managed to capture almost exclusively only footage of Amos Vogel saying how he had wanted to do something and show films nobody else was showing. I had a firm understanding of that concept ten minutes into the film. I would have been interested in Amos Vogel's fascinating life, but we only grazed over that. I would have been interested in the films shown at Cinema 16 and their impact on NY film culture, but we only grazed over that, too. I would have been interested in the rise and fall of Cinema 16, but I left the movie not even sure if there had been a rise or fall. In defense of the film, the last 45 second shot is darling. But yes, not so much on recommending it, with or without the accompanying naked, fat, dancing, birthing hippies.
35-Please don't see this.

Hawaii, Oslo
You know, this wasn't one of the best films of the festival, but it is one of the ones I enjoyed the most. It's the story of a mental patient, his girlfriend, his caregiver, his convict brother, an ambulance driver, a couple having a baby, an estranged and suicidal mother and her two orphaned children and a small young girl and how their actions all interact over the course of two days. Think Shortcuts but with a stronger plot pull, and with the twist that two of the characters (the caretaker and the young girl) are actually supernatural beings. And look, I'm not denying that this film is mostly about putting the pieces together to make its gimmick work, but I thought it did it in a way that kept me very engaged (I say this defensively because I seemed to be alone in that thought). The story of the couple who has the baby is well-done, and a lot of the shots involving the mental patient and his brother are fascinating. Excellent use of motion and color in some of those shots. The thing is that you have to take this film for what it is, which is a film that's not focusing so much on compelling story or fantastic dialogue but on putting puzzle pieces together and pretty shots on film. I thought it did all that. I liked it. I liked it a lot. And again, the last forty-five seconds of film are beautiful.
68 ? Highly recommend seeing

The Intruder
I love Claire Denis films, but I went into this movie with so much hesitation. Words had been used to describe this film such as "surrealist", "elliptical" and my favorite, a phrase used by the programming director who introduced the film and who also clearly was not a fan of the film, "quite a challenge." I hate films like that. But you know what? I LOVED this film. There wasn't a single thing about it that I didn't love, and that includes some of the surrealist elements that you could spend hours and hours and hours and hours trying to interpret. The motion of the film, which Denis described at "the curve of the earth as (she) sees it," is stunning. The feeling of attachment to even the least explained character is intense. The film manages to end with the viewer feeling both that the film has reached its conclusion and that it could go on forever. It's so beautiful, both in story telling and visual elements. So beautiful. I felt emotional through the entire thing. And I felt emotional despite the fact that "surrealist" and "elliptical" and "challenging" were all appropriate adjectives. It was my favorite thing I saw, or actually one of two favorite things that I saw. I dreamed of it for nights.
74-Highly recommend seeing (But the only reason I didn't give it above a 75, which gets into you MUST see it territory is that some people really would hate the French surrealist bent of it.)

Murderball
I know you will think I am making this up when I say it, but this is actually a documentary about paraplegics who play wheelchair RUGBY. I'm not making it up though, this happens, and there are world championships and para-olympic events for it. They make these aluminum chairs that look like torture chambers and ram into each other. Players are given point values for how much use of their limbs they have left and you can't have more than 8 points total on the court at any one time, which is to say somebody who can barely move at all is on the court at all times. There are rivalries, and most notably there is a rivalry between the US team and Team Canada. This is largely because the coach of Team Canada is a former wheelchair rugby player for the US who defected over to the Canadian team after he got cut from the US team. I know you think I'm making this up, but I'm not. This is a fantastic documentary. FANTASTIC. For several reasons. Firstly, the five characters who get followed around are all completely engaging. Secondly, the sports story of the quest for the Olympic medal and the Canadian rivalry pulls you through everything. Thirdly, it's nicely counterbalanced with the story of a man who just became paraplegic and his struggle to adjust. Fourthly, there's at least 10 minutes of film where we get to learn how paraplegic people have sex. Fifthly, there's an interesting sub-story about the reconciliation between one of the paraplegics and the man who put him in the chair. And lastly, it just really makes you think about life and how grateful you should be for everything. Excellent.
75- You MUST see this

Mouth-to-Mouth
This was not my favorite movie, nor was it the best movie, but it was certainly the movie that stayed with me the most. It's a film about a man who starts a cult under the guise of creating a better life for homeless kids and getting them off drugs. Of course, eventually the cleaning them up and getting them off drugs and taking them to a vineyard in Portugal where they can all work outside in the fresh air every day and stay clean turns into the development of a full on, creepy cult. There's also the even creepier subplot about how the mother of the girl who is the protagonist joins the cult as well. Eventually, of course, the girl and her pseudo-boyfriend escape the cult, leaving the mother and the cult leader behind. The cult, by the way, is called SPARK, which stands for Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge. There are two things to love about this film. The first is that there are three sort of modern dance sequences. The first involves the pseudo-boyfriend dancing with the body of a dead SPARK member. The second is a dance sequence with the mother and daughter, and the third is the daughter and the pseudo-boyfriend at the end of the film. All lovely and captivating. The second reason to love this film is that, more than any other film I saw, it creates this total alternate reality that you truly feel like you're a part of. You really end up leaving this film feeling like you're living in a van with a bunch of homeless kids in this smoky colored film world. It's pretty powerful, despite having some first-feature-film faults.
68 -- Strongly recommended

Duck Season
This is a Mexican film that was getting all the buzz going into the festival. Though the programming director introduced it by calling it a film about "nothing," as Ho pointed out, it's really a film about a pivotal day for four people. Two young boys, one whose parents are geeting divorced and one who is realizing he's probably gay, are left home alone for the day. The neglected neighbor girl whose family has forgotten her birthday comes over to make herself a cake, which turns into pot brownies. For a series of reasons, and older man who is a pizza delivery guy also ends up spending the day. They all eat pot brownies and have revelations, and though it's paced very slowly, the process of watching them have those revelations is quite powerful. That's the very short version of this. The dialogue, I think, is some of the best dialogue we saw. The story of the pizza delivery guy and every moment with him in the film is most excellent. Look, the pace of this movie can lull you into near numbness at moments, but at the end, you will walk out feeling something big, and that's what counts.
65- Strongly recommened

Sepet
While this film on its own is not as purely good as The Intruder, it was my other absolute favorite film of the festival. It's a Malaysian film about a Malay girl who falls in love with a Chinese boy (who is also somewhat of a gangster) and the impossible tragedy of love that follows. It has lots of faults. The inter-racial element is never really brought to the forefront. Some of the dialogue scenes go on FOREVER and there are subtitling problems throughout. This film was made by a Muslim woman who goes out of her way in this film to make the male characters weak to a point that's a little bit offensive, even to me. But you know what? This film is SO SWEET. The love story between the girl and the Chinese boy? Sweet. The love story between the girl's parents? So sweet. The ending? Sweetest thing ever even though it's fairly tragic. It's just a really sweet, cute, darling love story and I would watch it a dozen more times, easily.
66 -- Strongly Recommended

Kept and Dreamless
A lovely movie about people who don't want to work and a precocious child. The mother is a drug user who gets pregnant, convinces the grandmother to pay for an abortion and than rather than get the abortion spends the money on drugs. The father simply doesn't work. The daughter is a smart kid who can handle herself, and then there's an ensemble of related characters. The story is about the daughter meeting her father for the first time, the mother having her second child and finding family in some way and the other characters searching for family-like connections. That, again, is the short version of the story. We were wowed by the child actor in this film, who pulled off precocious and childlike at the same time. There were so many individual scenes that were just worth watching on their own over and over again. My favorite scene was the scene where the young girl is reunited with her father for the first time. I'm told that in the Q&A afterwards, which we couldn't stay for, the director explained that she let the girl child actor meet and form a bond with the actor who was playing her father but then didn't let them see each other for months until they shot that scene. It's a really, really good film.
68 -- Strongly recommend

Boxers and Ballerinas
THIS IS THE WORST DOCUMENTARY FILM EVER MADE. MY RESENTMENT FOR THE FILMMAKERS IS OVERPOWERING. In front of them, the film makers had four compelling storylines to document. The struggle of a Cuban-American boxer wanting to go pro, and the story of a Cuban amateur boxer fighting for the world junior championship. The story of a Cuban-American ballerina trying to help her Cuban-American mother, who was a famous Cuban ballerina, start a ballet company, and the story of a Cuban ballerina in the Cuban system. I would have loved to watch these storylines unfold and explore the cultural differences in how the possibilities and support systems surrounding these boxers and ballerinas affected them, but NO. The filmmakers here confused themselves with being artists, and rather than just let me see and hear the storylines, the vast, vast, vast majority of the film was the filmmakers proving to me that they could shoot artistically. There were endless shots of birds flying with voiceovers about freedom. There were seemingly twenty minutes of ethnic music montages. And there was video and audio collaging of news segments and quotes from politicians on the Cuban "state of being." This could have been an AWESOME documentary, but NO. Instead, it was one step DOWN from the naked hippies who danced and birthed in the art-fuck shorts from earlier. AWFUL. Worst waste of compelling documentary material EVER.
8 -- Don't waste your time.

All in all, it was a great time at the film festival. Here's my favorite dialogue from the weekend: