A charming Israeli movie in the tradition of The Full Monty, A Matter of Size is the story of a group of fat friends who have had enough of body hating diet groups and opt to give the health-at-any-size world of sumo a try.

The world is not all sunshine and roses: sumo is a club for men only, to the disappointment of at least one woman, and though the film is on the whole really good about the gay character and bear culture, there is one pretty upsetting line delivered to him. Aside from that, it’s a pretty by-the-book story about finding your bliss despite the haters, regardless of if the negativity is coming from the world, your friends, your family, or yourself.

I had been nervous going into it — there is a fine line between laughing with people and laughing at them — but I was relieved to see that the film fell on the right side of that line. In a lot of ways it’s a formula movie, but there’s nothing wrong with a formula elegantly executed.

Two cast/crew notes: The reluctant coach is played by Togo Igawa, who just graced SIFF’s screens this spring in the Golden Space Needle Award winner The Hedgehog, which has me wondering just how many languages he speaks.

Co-director Erez Tadmore also codirected Strangers, a bittersweet romance between an Israeli and a Palestinian who meet in Berlin during the World Cup Finals. It was a selection at SIFF a few years ago.

Verdict: See the original version before the inevitable tone-deaf American remake happens.

There are two things to be discussed about Never Let Me Go. The shorter, non-spoiler points are as follows. It’s a beautiful & devastating film, perfectly cast. The novel is extremely internal, Kathy moving around among her memories of her school days, and selecting Carey Mulligan for the role was inspired. There are many scenes where she has no lines at all, just listens to another character, and of course she’s brilliant.

Having seen & been amazed by Boy A a few years ago, I’m delighted that people are finally starting to notice Andrew Garfield. And maybe now I’ll finally get my act together and watch Red Riding. Sounds like a great way to spend a stormy weekend.

The children were also cast astonishingly well, particularly Isobel Meikle-Small as young Kathy, so perfect that you wondered a bit if the filmmakers had hopped in the TARDIS and recruited Mulligan herself as a child. Of course Charlotte Rampling is worth seeing in anything, & Sally Hawkins is lovely as the teacher who questions the whole thing.

On the whole, it makes more concrete certain aspects of the novel, while preserving enough ambiguity that I’m still turning it over in my head days later. That, to me, is the mark of a great film.

So, there you go. Once you’ve seen it (or if you’ve read the novel, or if you don’t care about vague spoilers) you can carry on.

I suppose I am a particularly credulous reader. I certainly am with film. If a movie is at all working, for example, I am not scrambling to predict where it’s going. I just let it take me there.

In the case of this book, it never occurred to me to ask why the students were not rebelling against the fate society had put forth for them. This is perhaps unusual. It certainly is among the reactions to the film that I have seen, which is a bit surprising, because I feel that in the film there is even less room for the possibility of revolt than there was in the book.

There are, of course, all of the little things affecting their behavior. They wear bracelets that clearly serve as some sort of tracking device, if not actually a way to trace them, at least a method to tell when they have checked in and out of their lodging. They do not know a single person who is not either a future donor or an employee of the program, so they have no support system on the outside. They have no marketable skills, no experience of day to day life or adult responsibilities. The few who are allowed to volunteer as Carers can become a bit more worldly, but even then they live fully supported by the program. It’s a limited amount of freedom, and no independence.

More important to me, though, are the stories they tell. The myths that a population shares police the boundaries of their world, and from the time they were tiny these children had very strong stories about what would happen to them if they stepped even a few feet outside the boundaries of the school. Even if, as you grew older, you started to doubt that you truly would be forced to starve to death if you slipped briefly past the gates, you’d still take the point: outside of this place, you will not survive, and if you try & inevitably fail, you will not be allowed to return.

Of course, there’s the major myth: that students from this particular school are special, that their art shows something about them, that if they are truly in love they can get a deferral. It’s so elegant. The promise isn’t that they can be excused from donating altogether. That is too big of an idea to ever consider. The most they can hope for is a few years of happiness.

When I read the book, I was frustrated by what felt like a lack of worldbuilding. I had just read Unwind, a YA novel set in a world where abortion is outlawed, but unruly teenagers can be sent away to be “unwound”, which means, essentially, donating all of their parts. It’s still a pro-life position, you see, if the kid isn’t dead, just living on in many, many other people. And I had also started Spares, an aspect of which is people who have clones created of themselves, so if they damage any of their own bits, they can harvest from their spare.

After those two experiences, I wanted more from Never Let Me Go. But it wasn’t until the film that I understood that wasn’t the point. We’re walking a curving path through Kathy’s memories, and she’s not questioning or commenting on the wider world. That’s not what she’s interested in. She’s thinking about the trivialities that shaped them and their relationships: Tommy’s blue polo, the art they traded, the cassette she lost and Ruth found and what all of that meant.

Which, obviously, is what we all do. What are the things you bear with a stiff upper lip? What are the choices you make even though they can hurt you? What are the myths we tell each other and ourselves that keep us from dreaming fuller lives, let alone living them? And so on.

That’s the point. We don’t rebel, and neither do they. In the end, we all Complete.

As a part of their 15th anniversary celebration, last week the Northwest Film Forum ran the Arboring Film series. For $15 I could buy a pass for a week of films that had their roots, as it were, in support provided by the Film Forum. I only made it to six of the fifteen features, but it was very much worth my time.

* Off Your Rocker was described as “rough around the edges” in the series program guide, and here’s the thing. If the Film Forum is describing it that way, it must be *seriously* rough. And it was. A pseudo documentary about an underground club serving as a sort of Make-a-Wish organization for the elderly, it was a fantastic concept limited by a lot of elements in its execution. I’d love to see someone with more resources have a go at a remake, but all the same, the senior stunts that actually appeared in the film — the high speed chase & the go-cart racing — made it worth my time.

* It was followed by Naked Proof, which I enjoyed a lot. It’s an unconventional little story about a PhD candidate with an overdue dissertation and a sudden and strange responsibility for an unknown pregnant woman. The narrator is played by writer August Wilson, in what is probably his only film appearance, and appearances by locals Matt Smith & Charles Mudede make this a clearly Seattle production. Also, scenes in the Lemieux library made me desperately miss some aspects of undergrad. Who knew?

* I’m a sucker for any documentary about a subculture, and though it’s a common subgenre now, Bingo was one of the first. It’s directed by the writer/director behind Outsourced (which is now apparently a sitcom, because the world is very strange), is fun to watch, and does exactly what it says on the tin.

* First Aid for Choking is a feature set in Moscow, Idaho, following the lead’s attempts to either get out of town or at least put her past behind her, neither of which is a simple task with small town ties reeling you back in.

* Brand Upon the Brain is the main reason I bought a pass in the first place. Guy Maddin on the big screen is a must-see, and if you’re going to pay for one film, you might as well get a pass & stretch yourself a bit. That’s my thinking, anyway. It turned out to be one of Maddin’s more accessible features, and of course another mythic story of his childhood. This time, his parents ran a “mom and pop orphanage” in a lighthouse on an island. Like you do. There’s a mystery! Teen detectives! Mad scientists! Lots and lots of references to Twelfth Night, which I am a sucker for. Good times! Someday I’ll actually see a Maddin film with Maddin narrating. And then I will just keel over, dead of awesome. Also, it’s notable that it was a Seattle film, because most (all?) of Maddin’s other work happens in Winnipeg.

* We Go Way Back was the final film of the series. I was a little unsure of it going in, as I am the only person in Seattle who hated Humpday, but I was pleasantly surprised. I think it’s IMDb rating is really unfair. It’s a gentle story of a 23 year old taking a closer look at where her life is going, and what her 13 year old self would have thought of it. At 23 she’s an actress, and the film is set against a production of Hedda Gabler, perfect in local theater awfulness.

The only film I missed that I really wanted to see was Police Beat, but it was showing the same night & time as The Apartment over at the Metro Classics series, and I am only human. Still, it’s most awesome to live in a town where a difficult decision like that even has to be made.

Two better-than-average genre films are opening in Seattle this weekend. Hooray! Though you shouldn’t see either of them until you’ve seen Cell 211. (Unless you can’t do prison violence, which I respect. There’s a bit right at the beginning that made even me cover my eyes. But if you can, it is a hell of a movie.)

Anyway, first up is Buried. Ryan Reynolds plays a contractor working in Iraq in 2006. After an attack on his convoy, he awakens in a wooden box, having been kidnapped and buried alive. He has a few items with him, most notable being a lighter and a cell phone, with which he attempts to assess his situation and phone people to help him, to darkly comic effect.

If you’re at all interested in seeing it, you should make the effort to see it in the theater. The entire film takes place inside the box, with the spirit-of-the-law exceptions of (I believe) two shots pulling away from Reynolds as if down a tunnel. It’s just him, in a box, for 90 minutes, and it is utterly compelling. When it ended I went right outside, took big gulps of air, and thought seriously about if I really needed to return to my apartment. It wouldn’t have had nearly the impact on television, but it totally worked in a room in the dark.

Last night I caught a midnight screening of Let Me In. Now, I am a huge fan of Let the Right One In. I saw it twice in the theaters and read the book, so I did not for the life of me understand what the need was for a remake. I heard great buzz on it out of TIFF, though, and so I wanted to give it a proper chance.

Here’s the thing. It totally works. The cinematography is gorgeous, period details are perfect (it’s set in March 1983), the kids are both great, and there are some particularly interesting directorial decisions. Reeves keeps the pacing gentle and resists the undoubted temptation to kick up the gore & the body count.

I said on Twitter that if I didn’t know the first existed I would have loved this one. But I know it well, so comparisons are inevitable. In the end, Let Me In is an effective exercise, but it doesn’t bring anything new to the story. In fact, it takes away from it, smoothing over ambiguities that brought complexity to the original. I just hope that it brings a new audience to the original adaptation and book, because they both deserve it.

(A little more, since its 100% score at Rotten Tomatoes is making my head pop off. And since I saw it on September 8th, I don’t think this counts as “backlash”.)

Anyway. The Social Network opens in a busy bar and ends with a laptop in an empty conference room. This is meant to say something about Our Human Need To Connect. Perhaps it does. Perhaps I do not give a shit.

In the bar, Our Antihero Mark Zuckerberg is having drinks with a ladyfriend. In the course of this, he insults her, her college (she doesn’t have to study, he knows, because she goes to BU. Oh, fuck off), and more things I’ve blocked out due to sheer annoyance. She tells him that in the future, he’ll think girls don’t like him because he’s a geek. It’s not true. They won’t like him because he’s an asshole. She gets up and walks out, which on one hand is great for her, but on the other hand, she is the most interesting character in the film, so it’s sad to see her go.

(By the way? She’s fictional. This story has so few ladies — none whose names you remember — that Sorkin had to flat-out invent her. Nice.)

It’s true, though. Mark’s an asshole. As is every other person in this movie. He’s an asshole, the twin Winklevosses are assholes, Sean Parker is an asshole (and since he’s played by Justin Timberlake, there was never any doubt on this front), and even though within the film you like Eduardo, he is probably an asshole too. For example, he dates an insane girl solely because she’s hot, and then we’re meant to feel sorry for him when she is crazy. (Her one real scene is when she admittedly overreacts to a gift that shows he knows her exactly NOT AT ALL, and I gotta say, she has a disproportionate amount of my sympathy there.) Whatever, man.

But back to the bar. After Interesting Girl tells truth to power and leaves, Mark decides to take revenge on her (through LiveJournal posts. Oh snap). And when this turns out to not be enough to mend his manpain he takes further revenge by humiliating the entire female population of Harvard.

Classy, classy guy.

And so it goes from there. Here’s the thing. It’s well-done, obviously. It’s beautifully shot. Sorkin’s script is a delight, and Eisenberg is, to the surprise of no one who pays attention to anything, a natural at Sorkinese. The closing credits needle drop is perfect. It’s the first film I can remember that includes a bar scene where people have realistic trouble hearing each other. Etc.

But I just don’t care. I can’t get excited about a rich white guy full of angst about his inability to get into a richer white guy club. Oh, so they only let you in the bike room? YOU ARE AT HARVARD. Get a grip. It’s just a club. It’s just a website. It is not deserving of the gravitas it’s being given.

I’m a huge fan of Sorkin. But he’s at his best when he’s writing about things that matter. With Sports Night, the light subject matter was okay, because it was a sitcom. There was humor to balance the workplace obsession. The West Wing obviously was deserving of the weight. You can’t get a much more serious workplace than the White House, at least on network television. But he lost me with Studio 60, characters endlessly agonizing over a sketch comedy show, with a side of hamfisted social commentary*.

And now, it’s Facebook that gets the oh so serious treatment. But it doesn’t matter that much, at least to me. There was social networking before Facebook. There’ll be social networking after. Really, the only difference is that Facebook is the first one my mom joined, and that is not a recommendation. It means they get more money. I don’t care.

* Here’s a clue, sir. If you expect me to take you seriously you cannot go on and on about gay rights & how there are so many queer folks in Hollywood, but not actually have any gay characters on your damn show.

The Town is the new movie “from the acclaimed writer-director of Gone Baby Gone“. This is Hollywood Trailer Code for “Ben Affleck”. Who I am okay with, actually, because he’s in a lot of movies with homoerotic undertones. Or even overtones.

This trailer also included Jeremy Renner (being crazy AS ALWAYS) and Jon Hamm (who is pretty) and Rebecca Hall (who is also pretty) and Chris Cooper (who is brilliant and looks completely different in every single movie) and Pete Postlethwaite (whose character is named “Fergie”, a nickname not just any guy could rock).

And it turned out I could see it for free. Really, a lot of the time that’s all I need.

If you’ve only seen the poster, you are probably confused. The poster makes it look like it is a movie about mummified nuns robbing banks. This is not true. It is about guys who were taught *about* mummies *by* nuns and then grew up to rob banks, seeing as how that’s the family business. And I am really not sure why they bother with the costumes as the whole damn city knows who is doing the robbing. The city *and* the FBI, which is represented by Jon Hamm being smarmy & Titus Welliver (Silas on Deadwood) being annoyed that those darn thieves from Charlestown have pulled it off again.

I mentioned recently that many movies are twenty minutes too long. This is certainly true of The Town, which felt about three hours long but allegedly is only 124 minutes. It seems a lot of movies end. and end. and then end yet another time. In this case it is a bit tricky, because the extra twenty minutes are at the beginning of the film. So, keeping in mind trailers, come about a half hour late. Bonus: you will not have to see Victor Garber get his face smashed in*.

A downside to doing this is that you’ll be afraid you missed some backstory that explains Rebecca Hall’s character, bank manager Claire Keesey. Except, there isn’t one. I looked up the book the film’s adapted from — Prince of Thieves — on Amazon, and reviews say that a) the book is overlong and b) Claire is rarely present in it and it’s unclear what Doug sees in her in the first place.

So, basically, the flaws with the film are the same as the flaws with the novel. But here’s the thing. It’s hard to tell from this, but I did enjoy it for what it was. I wish it had managed to decide if it wanted to be a thriller or a character piece, but it’s more than competently shot and acted, and the final heist & fall-out is quite well-done. I wish it had been shorter, and that Rebecca Hall had been given something to do other than be a victim. But it is what it is, and it does it well enough.

* This is not really a spoiler. Basically, you see him long enough to be excited that it’s Victor Garber, and then James bashes him in the head. As if you didn’t know that James was crazy anyway, seeing as he is played by Jeremy Renner, who someday will do a romcom and I will not recognize him.

Five Things About Going the Distance:

1) It does not use the Cake song, but even so, the earworm sticks with you until the end of time.

2) Though better than I expected it to be — it has a few pacing issues, but it didn’t fill me with rage, which is frankly awesome for a romcom — it is about 20 minutes too long. In its defense, I am starting to think that about a lot of movies.

3) I never expected to see that much naked Justin Long, and I think everyone should be forewarned that that is going to happen.

4) Natalie Morales & Kristen Schaal are both in it, which should be awesome, but their roles are teeny tiny, so don’t see it for them.

5) The best line was a reference to Moesha, and was lost on a frightening percentage of the audience. I guess they’re too young to have spent their college years flipping between the WB & UPN. Too bad for them!

Five Things About The Social Network:

1) I’m calling it now: TSN will be a Yuletide fandom. There’s no way that demographic will be able to resist Mark & Eduardo’s longing looks. Or Justin Timberlake. Or the fact that there are no ladies whose names you actually remember.

2) Andrew Garfield is definitely the best part. And Jesse Eisenberg was probably born to spout Sorkin’s dialogue.

3) The film was crazy dark, visually. I don’t know if that was a choice, or if it was just a Pacific Place projection failure.

4) The narrative device was effective, intertwining the creation of Facebook with the two lawsuits that followed.

5) I was interested the whole time, but now, less than a day later, it has basically flown out of my head. White man pain. What is the point?

Throughout Inception I had this weird little parallel thing going on in my mind, all the superficial things about it that are similar to Shutter Island. Both star Leonardo DiCaprio, of course, and he’s operating in different levels of reality. He has a dead wife fucking with his head, and he may or may not be responsible for her death. They both begin on water and end with choosing a reality.

Both are structured like genre films: Shutter Island is noir (with Leo as the everyman cast into a world of dark characters) and Inception is heist (with him assembling a team to pull off one last big job). And one did not work for me at all, while the other is one of the best films I’ve seen all year (it being number 97, that’s saying something.)

Shutter Island was a maddening waste of talent, beautifully shot & wonderfully cast to no purpose at all. Enough doubt was laid from the beginning that I never believed anything to be true, and without any touchstones, I found I didn’t care.

In Inception, however, you know truth relatively. You might not know if you’re in reality, but you know about how far away from it you are. There are things that never made sense in Shutter Island, and there are things that shouldn’t make sense but do within Inception.

So, anyway. You should have skipped Shutter Island, but you should see Inception, ideally in the theater. The visuals are amazing, of course, but the sound design also really demands the theater experience. It’s definitely one of those films that I don’t want to tell you too much about; my plus one knew basically nothing about it, and I think her experience was probably even better. I will echo another blogger who saw it last night and expressed regret that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is not going to be the new Spider-Man. I will say that the cast is fabulous, the first 20 minutes could very well feel mannered and confusing until you get into the flow of the film, and so just roll with it, and the payoff, in my opinion, was quite satisfying.

And now I totally want to see it again.

* I love short films, but they can be ridiculously hit or miss. The Best of SIFF shorts package was the perfect solution. Every film in it was well-done, regardless of if it was to my taste. Notable to me: Glenn Owen Dodds (with David Wenham playing God as sort of a harried middle manager), Off Season (horror/thriller), and The Little Dragon (stop motion with a Bruce Lee action figure).

* Wasteland was one of my favorite documentaries of the festival, though still falling behind my beloved Marwencol. It follows an artist, Vik Muniz, as he works with the pickers outside of Rio de Janeiro in Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill in the world. They collect, sort, and resell the recyclables from the dump, and Muniz organizes some of them for a large scale photography project incorporating the materials they work with. Through it we get to know the pickers/artists, challenging assumptions about the people who do that work and why.

There are problematic elements of it, though I think the film doesn’t shy away from that. Muniz is upfront about how lucky he is to have changed his circumstances; we visit the São Paulo home where he grew up, but he now lives in New York. Also, I think Walker is not entirely comfortable with Muniz’s position of power, and makes the entirely correct decision to focus largely on the pickers themselves, their pasts, their interests, and how their lives are affected by Muniz for better or for worse.

* The Concert was a totally charming fable about a Russian conductor-turned-janitor, a loss of status due to refusing to fire Jewish musicians. 25 years later he intercepts an invitation for the current orchestra to play in Paris, and pulls together the original team to put on a show. Is it improbable? Of course. Do I care? Not a bit.

* Mao’s Last Dancer was a pretty infuriating final SIFF selection. I have no idea how it scored so high among the audience. I spent some time looking up other reviews, trying to figure out what other people saw in it. It didn’t really clarify things. Instead, I came across things like this, from Time Out Sydney: “A scene in which [ballet director Ben] Stevenson, a driven but gentle and nurturing man, has to explain to Li the meaning of a racist term, is quite affecting.” No. Stevenson was a manipulative asshole, and since he didn’t have enough respect for Li to tell him what the term actually meant, he lied. Affecting, I suppose, but certainly not in the way implied. Whatever, people.

Anyway. Based on the memoir by Li Cunxin, Dancer tells the story of how he was removed from his family at the age of 11 to study ballet in Beijing, a chance event that eventually brought him the the United States to dance in Houston. To stay in the country despite the wishes of the Chinese government, he marries fellow dancer Elizabeth (Amanda Schull from Center Stage, still a mediocre actress, in case you were wondering). Elizabeth, by the way, is treated horribly by Li, by the consulate, and by everyone associated with the Houston Ballet, apparently for the crimes of being a) female and b) not a brilliant dancer. So aggravating.

I thought Joan Chen was marvelous as his mother, but then, she’s always fabulous. She deserved better than this role where, in film’s cringe-worthy emotional climax she and Li’s father are brought up on stage to be reunited with Li at the end of a performance. All the more appalling, really, because I’m sure that’s how it actually happened. Because, as aforementioned, Stevenson was a manipulative asshole. I’m getting angry again just thinking about it.

I did appreciate the unashamedly 80s set design & cinematography. Oh, and of course the dancing. (So far as I know, which is not far because I know fuck-all about ballet.) But that’s about it. The rest was overlong, poorly written, heavy-handed, and generally insulting.

(Also, hee. I had totally forgotten that Li had remarried until I read it in another review. So that should give you some idea of how underdeveloped *that* relationship was. If by underdeveloped you mean NOT DEVELOPED AT ALL, and I do.)

I think that the thing I found most frustrating about the whole thing is that the concept should have been right up my alley. A dance film focused on a Chinese guy? As a romantic lead, no less? This never happens. If it had been even slightly effective I would have been all over it, frustrated as I am with the Western media’s inability to see Asian guys as desirable, as well as their inability to make dance films that don’t star blonde girls.

I guess I’m still waiting.

…and that’s it, kids! 50 SIFF films. Back to the real world of movie going soon: I saw Cyrus last week & Toy Story 3 this weekend, and am planning on Ondine this week. Fair warning!