No Wrench

I hardly know where to being. Wow, just wow. This was sold out when I tried to get tickets so I had to wait in the rush line to try and get again. And I can’t begin to say how glad I am that I waited (and that I was one of the first thirty people in the line). Andy Garcia plays a prison guard who lives with his highly dysfunctional on City Island in the Bronx. City Island is a strange little fishing community that hangs off the side of the borough with its own strange local ways. Everyone in his family is hiding something and everyone is unhappy. And the film picks up right as it all starts to unravel. Beginning to end, this film is side-achingly hilarious. You laugh at the funny parts, you laugh at the painfully awkward parts, you laugh at the ridiculous contortions everyone goes through. The entire things feels like a situation comedy on mass amounts of steroids. If you were to take your standard TV sitcom and multiply the acting ability, screen-writing, and production tenfold, you would start to get a feel for what this movie is.

There isn’t much of a message in this film, other than life is complicated and dishonesty will only make it more complicated in the end. But so well done. Five out of five. The film is still showing a couple other times. Go see it. It doesn’t have a distributor yet, so who knows when, if ever, it will come out in theaters. If there is justice in the world, it will get a wide release, but the film industry does not always reward the deserving.

Incredible powerful documentary about the music of the Civil Rights movement. The documentary part of this film was incredible. The vast amounts of footage, but also archival sound (mostly from the Smithsonian Folkway’s collection), were used to great effect to reintroduce the Civil Rights era to people who are young enough to not remember it (one of the goals of the film makers). The interviews with both some of the older leaders, but also the old foot soldiers, of the movement were compelling. And there were times when it truly border on brilliant in its use of music and image. I have two complaints, though, about this film.

The first is that at many times it felt more like a documentary about the Civil Right movement that happened to be mentioning film, rather than an actual documentary about the music. There was very little actual meat devoted to talking about what the music was, though there was plenty of time devoted to talking about why it was important. So while I walked away understanding how singing created a sense of unity and strength among the African-American community that allowed then to resist the horrible abuse they took during the protests, I know very little about where those songs came from. The chain of decent from slaves singing in the fields, to the tradition of song in African-American Christianity is mentioned, but also largely grossed over. The cross-influence of white singers who joined with the movement was, again, mentioned but mostly glossed over. The evolution of the protest music and its links with the popular music of the time was never mentioned. And, to me, that was largely disappointing. There are already a good number of Civil Rights documentaries. This one had the potential to be something different—a look at the cultural side of the inflection points in American history—but it failed to live up to that. That doesn’t make it a bad film. It is fantastic documentary. But it is not really a true documentary about the music.

The second complaint ties into the first. The filmmakers collaborated with a number of contemporary musical artists to reinterpret the classic protest songs of the sixties. No problem with that. And they put together a bravura group to do it, including Wyclef Jean, John Legend, Angie Stone, and the Roots. Again, no problem. But they included almost twenty minutes of footage of these performers in the documentary. Why? These performers had no bearing on the Civil Rights music. They also never appeared to talk about the influence of the era and its music. Essentially we were treated to glossy looking music videos that appeared to be more an ad for a movie soundtrack than a part of a documentary. Not all the musical interludes were barren; some of them were cut together with archival footage to create some absolutely beautiful and moving moments. And maybe demonstrating the emotional power of this music was part of the point. But for a film that leaves out so much meat (see complaint 1) to waste twenty precious minutes showing Joss Stone, etc. cooing on the microphone was highly disappointing.

None of that is to say that this is not a powerful and effective documentary. It is. The filmmakers did an incredible job of invoking the passions, the terrors, and the struggles of the era and did show the role that music played in the lives of people participating in that movement. For the reasons mentioned above, I gave it a four out of five, but it is a movie I cannot recommend enough. I really hope that the filmmakers are able to carry through with their plan to have this shown in schools around the country, because it is something that should be seen.

A Norwegian film that provides a delicious counterpoint to Pandora’s Box. Like Pandora’s Box, this is a film about relatively little, but it manages to be intensely interesting and compelling. The pacing is measured, yet it never become boring. And while there is not a clearly defined narrative arc, there is a journey and a change. The main character is a depressed ex-skier who spends his time drinking and smoking, while working (poorly) at a ski slope. So when his ex-best friend (who stole his girlfriend) swings through town and reminds him that he has a son living with his ex-girlfriend, he decides to leave it all behind and travel north to see his young son. And that’s just about it. The rest of the movie is his travels through the nearly empty northern parts of Norway and meeting a wide variety of quite strange individuals. The woman sitting next to me didn’t think much of this film, “The entire movie was just him traveling around and meeting strange people?” she asked me as the screening ended, in a tone of those that implied she was not impressed. I, however, was impressed. The frozen beauty of the north, the quirky Scandinavian humor that infused the entire performance, the fantastic bluegrass score (bluegrass is apparently a big thing in Scandinavia), a wonderful cast (who, except for the lead, were all untrained amateurs the director happened across), and the entire slow mediation upon what it means to be feel alone both physically and emotionally, combined into an outstanding film. A clear five out of five, even if the lady sitting next to me didn’t agree.

We’ve all been inexplicably shaped by our high school experiences: rather inevitable given that we spend our most tumultuous years trapped in a building with hundreds of other people undergoing the same hormonal uproar. Stay Cool is about those people who have never really managed to get beyond their experiences in high school. Mark Polish plays a successful author who has been invited back to his high school, 18 years after his own graduation, to give the commencement address. And for him, everything has remained pretty much the same. He’s hanging out with his old friends, living with his parents, infatuated with the same girl, except everyone is an adult now. The movie is mostly a comedy, but also something of snapshot of how the pain we feel growing up never quite goes away. There is little true profundity to be found here, except for a gentle chiding that we really do need to let go of the past, even though it is probably impossible to do so. This was a clear case of a film deserving a three-and-a-half, but since such things aren’t allowed I rounded up to a four. Mostly because it was fantastic to see Mark Blucas (Riley from Buffy) playing a high school jock turned hard-drinking basketball coach and all around asshole. And because Winona Ryder is just absolutely adorable.

Turkish film about three adult children who discover that their mother has Alzheimer’s, which causes chaos in their already dysfunctional lives. Except that nothing happens. Two hours of nothing happening. Staring at a brick wall might have been more fun. The actress who played the mother was pretty good and had some moments of comedic dementia. But those felt like a wee sprinkle of rain in an arid desert of boredom. There were no lessons learned, no life changes, no real story. It gets a two out of five, since it didn’t cause me to walk out and the actors did a good job. They just had absolutely nothing to work with.

Plotwise this was an extremely bland film. Average British dude has 5 relationships which all end badly. Each of the five is different and all contain varying degrees of moderately humorous moments. But overall, there really isn’t any character arc or any dramatic tension. And that, ordinarily, would have made this a little bit of fluff. What sets this film apart are the various creative storytelling techniques that director Julian Kemp employs. Non-linear action, animated dioramas with Barbie dolls, various breaks in the fourth wall, found footage, and even a giant amusement park that serves as a metaphor for the main character’s life (similar to the demented one in Monkeybone). It is almost sad that such incredible creativity was employed to tell such a mundane story. Maybe it was inevitable, since I am not sure that a more intricate story would have held up well under the heaping serving of cinematic device. If I were to judge this solely on the quality of the story, this film would have earned a 3 (if it hadn’t been British, probably a 2, but British people are dryly humorous in a way that tickles me correctly). But I enjoyed the myriad techniques that were employed in crafting this film enough that I was willing to give it a four.

I can’t think of a better way to start off Tribeca 2009 than this charming Algerian comedy (film really has gone global. It is fantastic.). A comedy of errors in the classic sense, Masquerade follows the exploits of Mounir, a gardener for the local bigwig. More than anything, Mounir wants to be accepted and looked up to by his peers, a process that is hindered by his own social awkwardness, but also by the fact he has a narcoleptic sister. So he devises a scheme whereby he pretends he is going to marry his sister off to a wealthy Australian. His sister, when she isn’t passed out, is carrying on a secret romance with Mounir’s best friend, and seizes on this plot as a way to force her admirer to ask her brother for permission to marry her. Soon enough, the entire village is worked up to a fever pitch over the impending, though fictional, nuptials. Zany hijinks, with a healthy dollop of human frailty, ensue.

What truly makes this film is the fantastic cast, starting with the main character who radiates such an earnest desire to be thought well of that one is forced to feel empathetically towards him. Of course, he is also controlling, self-centered, and something of a dick—in the contrast between the two reactions he inspires is found the humor. His sister is played by Sarah Reguieg who is both radiantly gorgeous and imbues a role which could easily have been played solely for laughs with a quiet calm and dignity. As a woman in a Muslim society, she has as much power as she can extract from the men around her—a fact she is frequently reminded us—yet despite her random napping she manages to remain in control (mostly) of the situations around her. And the rest of the supporting cast, including Mounir’s wife, son, and best friend, are uniformly excellent. In the end this is a well crafted screwball comedy that could just as easily been set in, say, Victorian England as in North Africa. It is the execution, not the premise, that elevate this film from being mildly diverting to wholly captivating. A solid five out of five and a great start to the festival.

Another year, another Tribeca Film Festival. As in years past, each year they make it slightly harder for people like me to get tickets and move more and more of the festival out of Tribeca. The one improvement is that eighty percent of the films are now showing in a single theater, making it much easier to get around (and making it possible to pack in more movies). The theater is in the East Village, not Tribeca, but such is life (though it does make the American Express commercial featuring people extolling how much business the festival brings to Tribeca ironically funny). However the festival eliminated the discount ticket packages they offered last year, which had replaced the daytimer passes they offered the year before, leaving no worthwhile packages for individuals who wanted to see lots of films. Thankfully, they did not raise their prices, which made the sting slightly less.

The festival also moved to siphon as much money as possible out of the pockets of ticket buyers. As in years past, there is a two dollar per-ticket surcharge for tickets purchased online and over the phone. Why there is an online surcharge in general is mind-boggling to me, since it has the least overhead of any of the three methods, but I digress. In years past, tickets went on sale Saturday morning at 11am in-person and online. So as long as you showed up early to stand in the line, you could get all the tickets you wanted without paying surcharges. This year, however, tickets went on sale at 11am on a Tuesday, but the box office didn’t open until 2pm. That meant if you wanted to guarantee getting tickets, you had to get them online or on the phone, which made Tribeca an extra 2 dollars a ticket.

Since I refuse to pay the surcharges, I went to stand in line, knowing I was probably going to miss out on a lot of movies I wanted to see. Now due to some interesting circumstances, I managed to get my tickets at noon, which meant I got tickets for 23 out of the 29 films I wanted. Still, compared to years past, that is a pretty horrible hit rate. There were 3 or 4 films I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get, because they were the headliner movies that I figured pass-holders would snap up. But still, it was obvious that being forced to wait an hour after people could get them online had an effect. All in all, I’m pretty pissed. Obviously not pissed enough, yet, that I’m going to stop attending, but it will happen eventually. I’m sure the festival won’t care if I stop attending, but it will be sad. Anyway, I’m going to try rushing for tickets for 5 of the 6 I missed out on, so we’ll see what happens.