For the Shorties

Capsule reviews of the Film Festival's best, brightest and downright baddest.

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Published: Oct 13, 2010

Devout outdoorsman and professional loner James Franco finds the sticky end of solitude when he's trapped at the bottom of a remote ravine, his right arm pinned by a loose boulder. Based on a true story, Danny Boyle's movie (written by Slumdog Millionaire's Simon Beaufoy) goes the subjective route, embodying Franco's increasingly vivid hallucinations. The jittery, adrenalized camera is everywhere, even inside his rapidly draining CamelBak, working your nerves raw. It may take a while to recover from the movie's stomach-turning climax, but that's only because Boyle succeeds so thoroughly in getting under your skin. Oct. 23, 7 p.m., PMT; Oct. 24, 7:20 p.m., PMT.

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You could watch this documentary while doing a crossword — shit, while making your own damn word puzzle — but that's OK. Alamar, about a Mexican father (Jorge) embarking on a fishing trip with his so-cute-you-wanna-strangle-him-to-death son (Natan) before his ex-wife gets custody, is as quiet and slow as a meditative thought. Shots linger for minutes on a single wave; the narrative's climax may be Jorge and Natan befriending a snow-white egret while barely speaking. It's fairly amazing, then, that the doc manages to convey such knotty feelings, like the sensual richness of a poor man's life and the bittersweet excitement a family experiences during its first and final journey. Oct. 16, 12:25 p.m., R5; Oct. 17, 12:10 p.m., R5.
When you live in a city like New York, the process of getting your child into a private school is ridiculous and sometimes impossible. Jeff (Neil Patrick Harris) and his pretty wife, Samantha (Bonnie Somerville), leap from their comfy life in Delaware to a cramped basement apartment in NYC and begin scouting schools for their 5-year-old. What ensues is a wild goose chase of lying, scheming and, yes, sexting their way into one of the city's most prestigious institutions. Along the way, the couple re-examine their relationship and reason for moving, but that's about as deep as it gets. It's basically a fluff film, but it's cute, the jokes are good and there's a Sedaris in it (Amy) for bonus points. Oct. 16, 7:15 p.m., R5; Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m., PMT; Oct. 24, 9:45 p.m., Rave.
Although it's set in the world of ballet, Darren Aronofsky's movie hits a pitch that would normally be called operatic. Dancer Natalie Portman is provisionally cast in her first lead by priapic company director Vincent Cassell, but she needs to prove she can dance both white and black swan in his double-cast Swan Lake. Portman, not surprisingly, nails the glacial perfection of the first, but it takes bad girl Mila Kunis to get her in touch with her dark side. As Portman's transformation progresses, Aronofsky makes over her body, as well; she decomposes and renews in a manner worthy of a Cronenberg heroine. The literal-mindedness of Portman's makeover is nearly ludicrous at times, but Aronofsky's amped-up fervor just barely holds it together. Oct. 14, 8 p.m., Annenberg; Oct. 16, 7:30 p.m., PMT.

Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling play an unhappily married couple attempting to reignite the flame in Derek Cianfrance's bombshell feature. Notwithstanding the scattered flashbacks to happier days, the movie's approach is uniformly glum, but the actors' bloodied performances find tragedy in the mundane process of falling out of love. Perhaps Blue Valentine prizes verisimilitude over insight, but it's still quietly devastating. Oct. 15, 7:30 p.m., PMT; Oct. 16, 5 p.m., PMT.

Documentary legend Frederick Wiseman gets a rare area screening with his newest work, which surveys Lord's Gym in Austin, Texas. That's as much concrete information as you'll get from the film, which per Wiseman's protocol is presented without comment or narrative intervention. Instead, the film is rich in the observation of bodies in motion, the sights and especially sounds of men and women in training: the thud of fists colliding with the heavy bag, the squeak of springs beneath the surface of the ring. The outside world intrudes late in the film (it would spoil things to say how), but for the most part the gym remains its own floating world, the walls covered with advertisements for fights long since past. Oct. 18, 7:35 p.m., R5; Oct. 23, 2:15 p.m., Annenberg.

This one should have quit when it was ahead. Written and directed by Marc Erlbaum, Café centers around a West Philly coffee spot where a bunch of folks — a couple on a first date, a drug dealer (Jamie Kennedy) and his posse, a nerd on a computer, a brooding writer, a cop and his junkie brother — get their morning buzz. They're served by grungy-cute, tattooed Claire (Jennifer Love Hewitt, doing her best impression of that kind of person) and nervous, Ben Folds-esque Todd (Daniel Eric Gold), who yearns to swoop Claire away from her ragey boyfriend. In theory, these characters' stories could weave and interlock until the audience realizes that, yes, everyone's connected — and that would have been nice. But when the computer nerd gets a pop-up message from Elly (Madeline Carroll), a 12-year-old who claims everyone in the café is just an avatar in her computer game, any semblance of plot cohesion flies immediately out the window and is replaced by a weird jumble of morality messages spouted by a virtual tween. Oct. 16, 7:30 p.m., Rave; Oct. 21, 5 p.m., PMT.
At some point in Carancho, a cynical Argentine drama about crash-victim scams, just about every major character is covered with blood. Viewers might need a shower to wash off this unpleasant, unremarkable film about Luján (Martina Gusman), an ambulance doctor, and Sosa (Ricardo Darín), a sleazy lawyer who trolls accident scenes for clients. Eventually, the pair begin an affair and work a scam to better their lives. Yet Carancho is hardly an intriguing redemption tale; these unlikable characters are too emotionally withdrawn to generate any real sympathy. And much of Carancho tries viewers' patience — from the graphic, surgical realism to the ludicrous plotting. Even the tense finale is marred by an unsurprising coda. This film is pretty much dead on arrival. Oct. 23, 10:15 p.m., R5; Oct. 24, 7:40 p.m., R5.

Olivier Assayas' mammoth three-part film charts the downward slide of the international terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (Édgar Ramírez), from ruthless revolutionary to terrorist gun-for-hire. "Behind every bullet, there will be an idea," he swears early on, but a combination of greed, self-preservation and adrenaline rush eats away at his ideals. The conflict peaks with a masterful sequence that opens the second part, an hourlong restaging of the 1975 raid on OPEC headquarters whose exquisite tension doesn't overwhelm its political complexities. If it's not the world-beating masterpiece you might want from a work of its scope, Carlos is a dense and (believe it or not) tightly edited exploration of the corruption of political struggle in the mass-media age. Oct. 23, noon, PMT.

Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami's movies aren't usually subject to spoiler warnings, nor is Certified Copy, exactly. The relationship between single mother Juliette Binoche and British author William Shimell appears to take a hairpin turn midway through the film, but it's not clear whether we're meant to take the first or the second version as gospel. More likely, it mutates throughout the film, from scene to scene and even line to line, never giving way to a definitive answer. Shimell, a professional baritone with no previous acting experience, holds his own as the sometimes-prickly author, whose book praises forgeries as works of art in their own right. Binoche expertly anchors the movie's many long takes — rare for Kiarostami, as is the use of professional actors and a location, Florence, outside his homeland — all indicators that he's in the midst of a welcome creative reinvention. Oct. 16, 2:15 p.m., R5.

Sure, Betty Anne Waters (Hilary Swank), the single mother of two who got her GED and put herself through law school to exonerate her wrongly incarcerated brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell), is yet another plucky heroine for the two-time Academy Award-winner Swank to sink her big teeth into. And it's easy to dismiss this true story as a maudlin, inspirational drama better suited for Lifetime. But under the sure hand of actor-turned-director Tony Goldwyn, Conviction actually overcomes its disadvantages (not unlike Betty Anne!) and becomes an emotionally affecting film. Goldwyn makes the bond between these siblings palpable — which forms the heart and backbone of his absorbing film — and he coaxes stirring performances from Swank and, especially, Rockwell. Oct. 16, 1:45 p.m., IHouse; Oct. 19, 7:30 p.m., R5.

Now in his 80th year, Jean-Luc Godard makes movies in what amounts to a private language, one that at its best is semi-opaque. Film Socialisme — which, true to its name, was collectively shot by an army of amateur videographers equipped with a wide range of devices — is less dense than some of Godard's more collage-driven works, but he complicates matters by subtitling the film in a pidgin dialect he inexplicably refers to as "Navajo," isolating certain words and running others together. There's more than a touch of perversity to the practice, not to mention a thinly veiled fuck-you to Anglophone imperialists, but the stuttering language plays off the sometimes hypnotic imagery, much of it shot aboard a Mediterranean cruise liner whose polyglot population confronts the myths of a globalized world. (The manifest also, for no apparent reason, includes Patti Smith.) Godard's obsessions sometimes devolve into mere hectoring; he might want to consider laying off the Jews for a film or two. But the movie doesn't reduce to simple thesis statements, which makes it impossible to argue with but worth puzzling over all the same. Oct. 16, 2:15 p.m., R5; Oct. 20, 7:30 p.m., Rave; Oct. 24, noon, Rave.

If anyone was suited to make a comedy about suicide bombers, it's Britain's Chris Morris, whose TV series Brass Eye mercilessly mocked social hysteria and self-serious pseudo-authority. (Look up the "Paedogeddon" special, in which Phil Collins is snookered into endorsing a nonexistent charity.) The story of a group of British jihadis, Four Lions isn't as incessantly caustic as Morris' most incendiary satires, but its complexity of tone is stunning, ranging from outright slapstick to tragic farce. Morris manages to encompass the absurdity and the profound toxicity of religious extremism, overlaying them on top of each other until you don't know which end is up. Oct. 16, 4:50 p.m., R5; Oct. 22, 7:25 p.m., R5

Javorn Drummond lives in a small house on a long, dreary road in North Carolina. "This is the dungeon right here," he says. "This is MTV Cribs, the poor nigger edition." Javorn is one of four soldiers featured in Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker's second follow-up to Gunner Palace, after the incredible The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair. This one, also terrific, catches up with young vets now cage-fighting and running for office. Javorn works at a meatpacking plant and goes to college. "It's a cold hell," he says over a shot of a parking lot filled with trucks and nighttime mist. "When you come back from war, you come back to what you left." Oct. 22, 7:45 p.m., Annenberg; Oct. 23, 12:15 p.m., Annenberg; Oct. 24, 2:30 p.m., Rave.

Jacquy Pfeiffer says the most excellent cream puff is "basic, but dressed up so it's beautiful, without doing too much foo-foo stuff around. Let [the] cream puff be what it's supposed to be." His credo holds for most all the pastry chefs hoping to be admitted into the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, a group whose members are selected every four years in a remarkable competition in Lyon. D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus' lovely, strange, provocative documentary follows Jacquy and two other men with special affinity for sculpted sugars and cakes as they practice their art for long weeks before the showdown. Perfectionism makes each chef tense, intense and rather delightful in his own way. The film observes, sympathizes and pays apt respect. Oct. 16, 7 p.m., IHouse; Oct. 23, 2:30 p.m., Annenberg.

Laura (Mónica del Carmen) ekes out a lonely life in her Mexico City apartment, and her despair is achingly real. While she has sad sex with lousy lovers, things get interesting when she begins an intense relationship with the handsome Arturo (Gustavo Sánchez Parro). And while Laura is reluctant to tell Arturo her name, or much about her obviously troubled past, she encourages him to become increasingly more sadistic during their erotic encounters. Viewers will be engrossed (and possibly grossed out) by Laura's behavior, but director/co-writer Michael Rowe has created a provocative, slow-burn character study about debasement and self-worth. And to call del Carmen's fantastic performance brave is an understatement. Oct. 15, 10:15 p.m., R5; Oct. 24, 5:15 p.m., R5.

A modest, locally made indie, Lebanon, PA focuses on Philly-based Will (Josh Hopkins), dumped by his girlfriend, advertising career stagnating, who heads to the title town to re-evaluate his life after his father's death. Basking in the simple pleasure of mowing a lawn, Will begins a possibly ill-fated affair with a married woman, Vicki (Samantha Mathis). He also befriends his pregnant teenage cousin CJ (Rachel Kitson), who considers abortion (another life/death duality). Lebanon, PA writer/director Ben Hickernell may test his characters — and the audience's goodwill — by giving them thankless ethical quandaries and contrived situations, but he elicits warm performances from his three leads, and exhibits an eye for composition, an ear for dialogue and a nice sense for the rhythm of life. Lebanon, PA could be edgier, but despite all the life lessons and anti-abortion rhetoric, it never feels preachy. Oct. 15, 5 p.m., PMT; Oct. 24, 7:15 p.m., Rave.
Not unlike many of the grindhouse gems it discusses, Machete Maidens Unleashed feels like some of its reels were lost in transit and replaced with ones from a few different documentaries. Half the time, it's an examination of the Philippines' role in the creation of American B-movies (a role that's more crucial than you might realize). Diversions into those movies' content and consequent contributions to women's lib and other late-'60s cultural revolutions prove more distracting than revelatory. Still, dozens of archival clips and interviews from luminary cult filmmakers (American and Filipino alike) make for an enjoyable, if misguided, presentation. Oct. 15, 9:45 p.m., IHouse; Oct. 20, 5:30 p.m., R5; Oct. 22, 10 p.m., Annenberg.

When a group of unprovoked men assault Mark Hogancamp, an illustrator, they kick all of the memories out of his head and vanquish his ability to draw. Miraculously, Hogancamp retains his creativity, and creates a gorgeously complex mini-WII-era model town in his backyard, christened "Marwencol." In it, there's a doll representing himself, as well as ones for all his friends and co-workers, and it finds love and self-actualization where he can't. The documentary is inspiring without ignoring Hogancamp's profound melancholy, and has many multitudes that are too satisfying to reveal here. Oct. 17, 2:30 p.m., Rave.

Bud Clayman's face will follow you for days: Both the film's director and subject, Clayman has obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, bipolar disorder and Asperger's, and his resting expression is at once chronically insecure and emotionless, his forehead as crinkled up as old tissue paper. Clayman's countenance says more about mental health than much of the movie, however, which doesn't delve into his relationship with his father — a man who questions whether mental illness even exists — as much as it should. That being said, the scenes that peer into Clayman's inner dialogue are enlightening (OCD sufferers berate themselves for transgressions as small as bumping into someone in an elevator?), and it's emboldening to see a handicapped man begin life anew at age 50. Oct. 21, 5 p.m., Rave; Oct. 23, noon, Annenberg.
Beguiling Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Tropical Malady) explores the spiritual landscape of a dying man's mind in an elusive movie whose pungent flavors overpower its gossamer plot. As the movie moves through pasts and futures real and imagined (or possibly mythic), we brush up against monkey ghosts and a talking (and horny) catfish, maneuvering through thick greenery that blots out the setting sun and is always accompanied by the hiss of hovering insects. It's a sensuous delight, one that leaves plenty to chew on after the fact. Oct. 21, 7:05 p.m., R5; Oct. 23, 2:15 p.m., R5.

When photographer Vik Muniz decided to go back to Brazil to shoot garbage, the idea didn't meet with instant approval. He went on to photograph pickers in a Rio favela, daily sifting through the largest landfill on the planet (the Jardim Gramacho) in search of recyclables. For Lucy Walker's film, they share their hard childhoods and lingering hopefulness. They help Muniz to make their photo portraits into art, applied under his direction. And at last, they're subjects of the artistic team's discussion: Should the pickers be exposed to another reality when they're so oppressed in their own? How will it change Tiao, co-founder of a pickers' union, to see London? The film can't answer, but it certainly complicates questions of how artists and subjects interact. Oct. 17, noon, IHouse; Oct. 24, 5:05 p.m., R5.

After the elliptical Intruder and 35 Shots of Rum, Claire Denis plays it relatively straight with the story of African plantation owner Isabelle Huppert, who clings to her land despite the imminent native revolt. Those who prize Denis' more abstruse efforts might grumble at the movie's relative lucidity, but there's still plenty left unsaid, not least the story's particular time and place. Denis, the daughter of a French civil servant, was raised in several African countries, and she knows the texture of the land, as well as the stubbornness of colonial holdouts. As the movie takes increasingly bloody turns, it verges on allegory, but Denis never loses her grip on the tactile. Oct. 22, 7:35 p.m., R5.
This Down Under Western stars True Blood hottie Ryan Kwanten as Shane, a cop arriving for the first day of his job as a lawman in Red Hill. Jimmy (Tommy Lewis) has just escaped from prison, hell-bent on revenge against Shane's boss, Old Bill (Steve Bisley). Also threatening Red Hill is a storm on the horizon and a reported panther(!) on the loose. This fine, old-fashioned tale of frontier justice works best within genre templates — breathtaking landscapes, quick-drawing shoot-outs — and less when it relies on cheap or obvious thrills. Kwanten is adept in the central role, but it's Bisley's gruff performance and Lewis' silent but terrifying turn that make Red Hill memorable. Oct. 21, 10:20 p.m., PMT; Oct. 24, 5 p.m., PMT.
Former valedictorian Sunny (Trieste Kelly Dunn) quits college to take care of her sick dad back home in Pensacola. So she works behind the counter at a bowling alley, dropping fake-mean quips and oozing unfulfillment. Still, everything was fine with her small-town karate instructor boyfriend Neal (Kevin Wheatley) until her old scholastic rival Isaac (Ryan Hunter) comes back to town over Christmas break to remind her there's a great big world out there. Brett Haley's feature debut can be funny, touching and charming, but also meandering, obvious and awkward. Like Sunny, The New Year struggles to stir up the ambition necessary to meet its potential. Oct. 16, 12:15 p.m., Annenberg; Oct. 17, 2:55 p.m., Annenberg; Oct. 18, 5:05 p.m., R5.

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