This movie is teetering on the edge of "not recommended," but there were just enough interesting things that kept
Film Noir on the "recommended" side of the fence.
Let's start with the fact that the house isn't black ... and that the title is more of a red herring than anything else. That's the first in a series of annoying bits that keep
Black House from being a great horror movie.
Epitaph is wonderful. South Korean film making has been *amazing* the last couple of years. You can definitely see the influence of Kubrick in the slow pull-outs and floating camera work.
No fancy all-access badges this year. They cost $30 more (each!) and there are less films we want to see. It just didn't make sense to spend that much money. Instead, we picked four films that looked really good. It's a leisurely film festival for us ... for a change. :)
I'll be posting the reviews this week. Yay!
Viva was made as a nod to 60's sexploitation movies. There was a Q&A with the writer/ director/ star/ set designer ... Anna Biller after the movie. She said that she wanted to show that the feminist questions and concerns of the 60's are relevant today. She just didn't sell it to me. The first review on IMDb says it best:
"How on Earth a movie with this many naked people in it could be this painfully dull is simply beyond me."
There were plenty of ridiculous moments that were very funny, but the movie isn't a comedy, per se. Viva, the main character played by Anna, gets raped twice (a date-rape kind of thing and a drugged and raped kind of thing) and the fact that she was raped is never addressed. I find that weird if you have the intention of addressing women's issues. Especially in the context of today.
I don't recommend the movie for watching, but if you want to see some AMAZING 60's crafts and stuff, you should check this movie out. Anna spent years buying vintage 60's things and making set dressings. She made several macramé plant hangers that are wonderful. The clothes, the bedroom sets, the living rooms, the paintings, the crochet ---- it's all kick ass. It would all look right at home on
Cathy of California. Maybe you could watch it with the sound off.
South Korea rocks the house once again with
A Dirty Carnival. This is a great gangster movie. I particularly liked the fight sequences. These particular gangs fight with knives and just maim each other. It's considered bad form to actually kill a rival gangster. There are lots of torturous hamstringing* and stuff.
The movie was a lot of fun, there was a movie within the movie and a good kid/bad kid from the neighborhood relationship. Pretty typical stuff, but done very well.
* From dictionary.com, "to disable by cutting the hamstring or hamstrings; cripple."
The Kovak Box had promise, but it didn't pull through. They started killing off the characters before I cared about them, so I wasn't so interested in finding their killer. I did enjoy the climactic scene in which hoards of annoying American tourists commit suicide (the mad scientist made them do it ...). The plot makes no sense - even on reflection. It's completely impossible, improbable, and im-everything-negative. I didn't realize Timothy Hutton was still acting. To put my review in perspective, this one was voted a festival favorite by viewers, so I'm in the minority.
Night Of The Sunflowers is a wonderful Spanish movie. Part crime drama, part mystery, part character study. I just read that this is the director's first movie. I'm shocked! This was a great movie - dense, rich, textured.
[photo taken 10/13/2006 in Philadelphia]
Um, I left out four film festival films. Luckily, Andrew keeps track of the films we see.
Even though
Trigger Man was produced by
Larry Fessenden and features a cameo appearance by him, I just can't bring myself to recommend it. It is a stunning example of bare bones film making ... but I think there weren't enough bones.
I was looking forward to the Thai horror movie,
Unseeable. Boy was I disappointed. I guessed the premise right away, which made the movie totally boring. It was like watching a puppet show. Every time someone moved out of frame, there was someone (or something) unexpected standing behind them. It got to be that if there wasn't something there, you felt a little disappointed. But you sure as heck weren't scared.
Here are a couple words about
The Living And The Dead: Amazing. Creepy. Uncomfortable. Weird. Wonderful.
The Director and DP did a Q&A after the movie. We learned that the estate where they filmed was mostly unaltered from it's current state for the movie. Everything about the movie was well done.
Well, that's the last of the Philadelphia Film Festival movies. Overall, I'm super pleased with what we saw this year. Last year was heavily weighted toward Asian Horror and Gangster movies. This year we had a better mix. I definitely loved having the All Access pass, especially since it was freezing cold, snowy, and rainy this year. We always got to wait inside with the other badge-wearing-neards (neards is "nerds" as said like Toby in
American Splendor).
Comedy of Power is a brilliant French movie directed by the talented
Claude Chabrol. As one of the
French New Wave directors, Chabrol has come to be known for his subtle, yet intense, mysteries.
This quote sums up my feelings for Chabrol's movies, "...Chabrol's work can perhaps best be seen as a cross between the unassuming and popular genre film and the pretentious elitist art film." Seeing one of his movies is like having your best friend explain quantum physics - he makes "French Cinema" friendly and accessible.
I have fantasies that as I age I will become
Isabelle Huppert. Just
look at her! In addition to being the most beautiful woman ever, she's an amazing actress that does the coolest movies - from
The Piano Teacher to
I (heart) Huckabees. I wish I was half as cool as she is.
Cruel Winter Blues is an awesome movie. It incorporates all the gangster-y goodness of an Asian ganster film with a warm and touching story. Well ... warm and touching in the context of gangsters.
A ton of wonderful films have come from South Korea over the last several years. I can't think of a South Korean film that we've seen that has been anything but spectacular.
In the post-movie Q&A with the director, we learned that
S&Man (pronounced Sandman) was 50% documentary, 50% fiction. I pushed for this one because the write up talked about how it was a documentary about the dark, shocking underbelly of the underground horror scene. Um, well it wasn't much of a doco ... and it wasn't shocking. Not. At. All. To be shocked by this movie you'd have to be an 8-year-old girl that cries at the thought of frowning puppies.
I've seen ads for
Severance, so it looks like it's going to get a wide release. It totally should because it's a great horror/comedy. Scary and funny. Perfect. It was a huge crowd pleaser at the Film Festival.
Here's about all you need to know: "A team-building weekend in the mountains of Eastern Europe goes horribly wrong ..." and "Rated R for strong bloody violence, language, drug content and some sexuality/nudity"
Boss Of It All is a comedy from
Lars von Trier. Lars doesn't do many comedies, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Boss Of It All is f*ing awesome and hilarious. Completely ridiculous and funny and fresh. Lars does a lot of his movies in English, but this one is in his native Danish.
I freaking love Lars von Trier. The first movie of his that I ever saw was
Zentropa at the Tivoli in Kansas City in 1991 (or so). This was before I cared anything about directors. Zentropa touched me in a deep way. And I know this because I never forgot the name of the film or what it was about -- and I forget the name of most of the films I see and what they are about. Andrew spends half his day saying, "We saw that movie last week/yesterday/last year. Don't you remember?"
Anyway, Lars' movies are the kind of movies where he conveys things that I can't express in words. I'm going to be very very sad when he's gone.
I really liked
Red Road. I think it obliquely addressed issues of privacy (or lack thereof) while still presenting an engaging story. I was a little disappointed with the ending. I don't want to give away too much, but I appreciate a dark movie that follows through to the bitter end and doesn't have everything come up sunshine and roses.
It's the same kind of wuss-out ending that
The Woodsman had. Come on! There are bad people in the world - they don't all end up being redeemed in the end. Both of these movies explored deep dark places of the human psyche and then tacked on a Disney ending. Argh!
I still recommend it, though. But just by a hair. I like to imagine the movie ended differently. :)
I Don't Want To Sleep Alone ... I don't want to sit through another minute of this movie. I love minimalist movies. I love no talking. I love beautiful shots. This movie was incredibly beautiful, but the characters were non-existent. The story was more-existent, but since I didn't know who the hell these characters were or how they related, the story didn't do much for me. For a movie, or any story, to be engaging, there needs to be tension ... and not the "why does this freakin' beautiful movie seem like it's 14 hours long?!?!" kind of tension.
In
End Of The Line Fundamentalist Christians get a message on their pagers to let them know the end is nigh. So, of course, they need to "save" the earth by killing everyone (if you are left alive after the battle [is the movie referring to Rapture or Armageddon?] then you go to hell, so if they kill you, you're saved).
The bulk of the movie takes place on the subway and in subway tunnels. The movie is low budget and campy, but there are some genuine scares and interesting characters. It's as much fun as you might imagine (if you imagine movies involving murderous, culty Christians would be fun). The whole theater was whooping it up.
[photo taken around 2001 of Church Street Station, San Francisco]
I could sprain my hyperbole muscles writing this post, so I'm going to try and rein myself in.
Fay Grim was better than I thought it was going to be, and I had high expectations.
Hal Hartley has a distinctive style that I find humorous and engaging. I strongly suggest that you see
Henry Fool first, just to make it more fun (not because you *have* to).
I think most of the people in the theater were there because it starred Parker Posey and Jeff Goldblum. I was afraid that they'd all be disappointed because Hal Hartley's films are anything but typical, but everyone seemed to really enjoy the film. He's an accessible eccentric.
[photo taken 3/9/2007 in Philadelphia]
Uro is an awesome Norwegian film. Uro is the name of Norway's
elite drug enforcement patrol. The movie focuses on one officer, HP, who makes the absolute worst decision at every turn. Every time he'd make a choice, I was thinking, "What? Oh, please turn back now. Please!" The movie is exciting, interesting, and well filmed. I loved it.
[photo taken 1/7/2007 in Philadelphia]
I was so engrossed in the visual beauty of
Invisible Waves* that I only noticed the gaping plot holes after it was over. I'm still recommending it, despite the crap plot, because it was so so beautifully shot. But, ugh, I'm in no hurry to visit Phuket or Hong Kong.
* The IMDb plot summary states, "After inadvertently killing his girlfriend ..." I'm not sure what movie they were watching, because the killing is anything but inadvertent.
[photo taken 2/11/2007 in Atlantic City, NJ]
We decided to go to the opening night movie of Philadelphia Film Festival since it was "free" with our passes.
The Ten is what you'd get if you took Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and
The State* and mixed them up in a blender. This kind of comedy probably isn't going to play well in middle America ... I'll admit that I'm not always a big fan of Brooks and Allen, either.
The movie is composed of ten parts (skits?) with each cooresponding to one of the Commandments. With a mini drama playing out in between them.
The all-star cast was awesome: Liev Schreiber (with a real, bushy mustache), Famke Janssen (I want her hair!), and Rob Corddry (from The Daily Show). Justin Theroux was completely unrecognizable as Jesus (yes, that Jesus). Justin was in David Lynch's Mullholland Drive, where he played a movie director.
After the movie there was Q&A with David Wain, Paul Rudd, Michael Ziegfeld, and Zach Page. It was pretty funny since David Wain and Paul Rudd were cracking jokes the whole time.
* The State was a sketch comedy show on MTV in the 90's (that I never watched). A lot of them are now in Reno 911 on Comedy Central (which I've seen several times and love).
The Philadelphia Film Festival starts on Thursday. This year we bought all access film passes instead of individual tickets. The last two years we've arrived for every film at least an hour in advance, which eats up a lot of time. With the pass we can stroll in 20 minutes before the film and we'll get seated first. It's a good thing, too, because we plan on seeing 20-30 films this year.