confessions of an amateur cineaste

To be perfectly honest, the only reason I saw Me & Orson Welles in the cinema at all is because it was part of SIFF’s Awards Buzz series. I really wanted to see the other two titles (A Single Man & The Young Victoria), and I am a sucker for a laminated pass. So it goes. I mean, it’s basically a Zac Efron movie, and he can’t act his way out of a paper bag. I would have seen it on DVD however, because I had heard great things about Christian McKay’s performance as Welles, and right they were. He’s magnificent in a role that would have been so easy to tip into caricature or scenery-chewing.

Unfortunately, Efron is the center of the thing, and you can just see the thinking behind it, as if a certain demographic will, like, totally go see a movie about Orson fucking Welles if only it has a *dreamy* lead. Um. No. So what we’re stuck with is glimpses of what could have been a great movie about Welles’ famous modern dress production of Julius Caesar, teases of what a film about that huge personality might have been, and then we’re yanked back to Teen Beat 1937.

Two moments at the end encapsulate the ridiculousness: first, a needle drop of extreme obviousness where “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” plays over Efron looking through clippings about the show, and second, that of course Efron’s English class has been studying the entire works of William Shakespeare, and so Efron winds up reciting (badly) a speech from the play, to great acclaim from his fellow students. Whatever.

To be fair to my motives, I had also rather been looking forward to seeing Claire Danes again, which is a genetic requirement for anyone who grew up on “My So-Called Life”, but the awfulness of the Efron pulled her down. Plus, the relationship between their characters skeeved me the heck out. He’s 17! She’s my age! Ew. Just, ew.

I must also admit that I enjoyed Zoe Kazan as the more age-appropriate love interest, who seems to do nothing but hang out at museums and attempt writing for the New Yorker. She was charming. And Leo Bill as Norman Lloyd was great fun as well. They & McKay deserved a better film, and Linklater, who has done glorious things in the past, should have given it to them.

Finally, I spotted two obvious typing errors in the final credits, which seems just ridiculous. I don’t even read credits that closely! Fail.

The full version of Red Cliff is actually two films, totaling over four hours. For the Western release, it’s chopped down to two-and-a-half hours. There was a representative at the screening I attended, asking people on their way out how they liked they film. I was tempted to respond, “nice and all, but I’d like to see the whole thing someday”.

The full release can’t fix all of the problems, like that it features one of the dullest sex scenes I have ever seen (quite a feat considering it features Tony Leung), and it would be bound to include even more trite scenes (such as the classic alliance-building scene of one blade of grass easily broken, but several woven together can resist). It would, however, spare us the horrible English voice-over at the beginning, and could perhaps give more power behind the many great action sequences.

John Woo is, after all, masterful at action, but perhaps not at scale. The film is gorgeous (I loved the paper lanterns rising), the battles are clear and not difficult to follow (and have some great maneuvers with only a little wire-fu), but we just aren’t made to care all that much most of the time. Takeshi Kaneshiro’s military strategist is a lot of fun, and of course Tony Leung would be worth seeing in a dramatic staging of the phone book, but it’s just not enough.

If you want to see Leung break your heart in wire-fu, rent Hero. To see him & Woo work action magic (with Chow Yun-Fat), rent Hard Boiled. For Kaneshiro, try House of Flying Daggers or Chungking Express & Fallen Angels.

I was sorry to miss this documentary at SIFF, so I was pretty stoked that they booked it at SIFF Cinema for the fall. Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love introduces us to Ndour, who is a compelling performer, and his family and band members who are all characters in their own right.

It follows his success as a musician, as well as the strength of his Muslim faith which he chooses to express beautifully in the highly-controversial album Egypt. It raised a big question for me, though, that the documentary tried to avoid: namely that the extreme reactions to the album in Senegal melted away once (spoiler!) it was honored with a Grammy, giving it outside recognition. It just made me go hmm.

The Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival was last month, but. Here’s the thing. I find it pretty hard to get excited about it because there is so much crap queer film. Plus, a huge part of the program is comprised of shorts, and there are many, many more crap short films than there are short films worth seeing. Add to that the fact that the majority of American queer film is terrible, so you can also cross off a whole bunch of features.

Since I’m a member of SIFF, though, I got some free ticket offers, and I went to two of them. First up was the awkwardly-titled The Man Who Loved Yngve, a sweet Norwegian coming-of-age film (high school kids in a rock band!) that just happened to include a gay love story. It wasn’t a perfect film, but it was exactly what I look for in a queer movie, namely, a movie with characters who happen to be queer. Just like life. It won the juried award for Best Feature, so I guess it was a good one to opt for!

The second film was the sing-a-long West Side Story, which was fantastic of course. It’s one of the musicals I was obsessed with when I was a kid; I wore out the soundtrack & I owned a book that contained the script for it and Romeo and Juliet, so it was just neat to see it on the big screen, and neater still to see it with a largely queer audience.

Okay, this is ridiculous. I was doing so well, and then I went to a preview screening of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and had some sort of a meltdown. Do I write about it as a movie person? Do I write about it as a fan? Wah! So I will just say that I enjoyed the experience (Cinerama!), that I need to see how they’ll do the final two films before I can pass judgment on what was cut out, and that it ain’t no Prisoner of Azkaban. (This is where, if I was writing as a fan, I would draw hearts around Alfonso Cuaron. Don’t judge.)

What else since then?

I saw more 69 movies: Downhill Racer (Redford!), Topaz (spy thriller, and most un-Hitchcock Hitchcock since Mr & Mrs Smith), Dillinger is Dead (which was really upsetting — I am losing my edge in my old age — but one hell of a performance from Michel Piccoli), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (which is what you should see, if you see only one of these, and not just because it stars Maggie Smith), and If…. (which was a surreal satire, and an interesting double feature with Brodie).

Then, a few ostensibly kids movies: Up, which I had wanted to see all along (the teaser trailer was a perfectly formed short film), but apparently it took record breaking heat to get me into the theater. I liked it better than Wall-E, I think, because it was good all the way through and in Wall-E I stopped being interested once humans were involved. (And have we talked about the trans character already? Yes, probably.) And I got to see a free screening of Ponyo, which was adorable. More Totoro than Mononoke, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

The Metro started its classics series again, but I have only made it over there for The Informant! I nearly forgot, which I suppose is probably a sign. It was lower-key than I had expected, but I am quite curious how it’d play on second viewing. Really rewarding, I’d suspect. Another thing I forgot about: the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. Hey, maybe it won’t suck this year. There’s a first time for everything.

Not that there’s any shortage of film. I have three-and-a-half more months of 69 movies coming up, SIFF Cinema is back from its summer break (oh, how I missed it!), and buzz from Toronto has me anxious for the big award season releases to start coming out. It was 80 this weekend but I am dreaming of fall, caramel lattes, and plenty of time at the theater.

Part of putting together my festival schedule is eliminating those movies which are coming out in regular release relatively soon. Soon has apparently arrived, and first up was Moon, a minimalist scifi film starring Sam Rockwell. To say it stars him is rather an understatement. His closest rival is Kevin Spacey who voices GERTY, a sort of second cousin to HAL.

To say anything more about it is possibly too much. I went in only knowing what I had seen in a trailer — Rockwell’s character is nearing the end of a three year contract at some sort of base on the moon, he is the only person there, and he encounters (or thinks he encounters) himself — and I have found every review today to be upsetting because they tell too much. It’d be an effective film either way, but all the better for experiencing the same confusion as the lead. Also, Rockwell is amazing in it, a performance that will surely be ignored at the end of the year because it appeared in a genre film. That is, frankly, tragic, because he *is* the heart of the film. Without him, who we believe immediately and fully, it would not work at all.

Putting off seeing The Hurt Locker was much more difficult. I’ve been excited to see it ever since it debuted in Toronto last September. Here’s the telling thing: it was worth the wait. It’s probably the best 2009 film I have seen so far, and definitely the best war movie I’ve seen since Three Kings. The two are similar, actually, in how clear the action is. You know where every bullet goes and nothing is without consequence. Intense, authentic, and with a much-lauded (for good reason!) lead performance by Jeremy Renner.

Once the film festival ended, I reactivated my Netflix account. Oh, you lucky people!

* Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Not my favorite of the Apatovian genre, but these two things I much adored: Paul Rudd being decidedly not typical Paul Rudd, and the puppet vampire musical. I swear, if people had told me earlier about the musical, I would have seen the damn thing in the theater. This probably says too much about me.

* Old Joy. Two old friends reunite for a road trip to a hot springs in the Cascades. Humpday totally lifted these character types, making Old Joy the interesting & awkward, reconnecting-masculine-friendship part of Humpday without the angry-making trading on straight privilege in pursuit of ‘art’. I actually got it because it’s from the same director as Wendy & Lucy, which is one of my favorite films so far this year. Old Joy is good, but Wendy & Lucy is better. (No, I am not just saying this because I love Michelle Williams.)

* Gran Torino is a difficult movie to pin down. It was extremely effective storytelling (also, which no one has mentioned, gorgeous cinematography), but I finished it with a lot of complicated feelings about the racial politics of it, a problem regarding which others have spoken better than I could manage in general, let alone in a capsule post.

* The Wrestler. I missed an opportunity to see this for free before it came out, and I am glad I did. I think the fighting scenes in particular would have been too intense, but at home on the TV the impact was lessened to some extent. Still compelling, though.

* Nothing but the Truth. I think this went straight to video, which is unfortunate. It’s a solid film with a stronge ensemble including the always-worth-watching Vera Farmiga, story inspired by the Valerie Plame case. Good stuff.

I was doing so well, and then I was very sick for a week, which threw off both my filmgoing and my posting. So now you get the entire second half of SIFF all at once. Lucky you!

* Mothers & Daughters wasn’t a perfect film, but it featured some stunning performances. It follows three vaguely interconnected mother-daughter pairs, and I would have been happy to see entire films on all of them, but particularly Gabrielle Rose & Tantoo Cardinal. It spawned a conversation at the bus stop afterward, even, including a gentleman who found the whole thing too intense and had to leave.

* The second Secret movie was a crazy, colorful flick I wouldn’t have sought out on my own.

* I picked The Missing Person largely because I was interested to see a performance from Michael Shannon, who was apparently *the* reason to see Revolutionary Road. The film is a modern noir, reworking tropes as appropriate. I liked it very much, and would like to see it again since I had a coughing fit & had to miss half of the ending. Apologies to everyone sitting around me; I am much better now!

* The third Secret movie benefited particularly from the Secret set-up, because not knowing the synopsis going in, I wasn’t waiting for the ‘hook’.

* I took one for the team and saw Humpday. It’s mind-blowingly popular in Seattle, partly because it’s from Seattle director Lynn Shelton, and partly because Seattle apparently loves its mumblecore. I have no idea why. The film is funny enough and Mark Duplass is exceptionally charming, but it isn’t nearly as revolutionary as it thinks it is. Trading on straight white male privilege is not art, kids, and it’s certainly not shocking.

* The Dark Harbor is a Japanese film about a lonely fisherman who discovers a woman and young boy have moved into his closet. He chooses to let them stay, and the result is a sweet and tender film. Outstanding, actually, since I just saw that this is a first feature from the writer/director. Confidential to the guy who sat behind me: we get that you think it’s funny. You do not need to guffaw and stomp your feet. Also, don’t crow “oh, I know what’s going to happen!” Guess what. You didn’t. So shut up.

* Don’t Let Me Drown was a high school love story, set in post 9/11 New York. It’s a simple story, well told.

* I picked Lovely Loneliness because it starred Inés Efron, who was marvelous in last year’s XXY. This film was a romantic comedy of sorts, with Efron as the neurotic lead. Well-acted, visually beautiful (I *want* her apartment!), and quirky (in a good way).

* Never one to pass up a revival film if I can possibly help it, I got to see a Once Upon a Time in the West. Fantastic, obviously.

* The final Secret movie I guessed based on clues the programmer gave the week before. Does this make me a gigantic nerd? Yes, probably. But I was glad to see it.

I missed the Belgian film Rumba when I first put my schedule together, but I overheard a passholder discussing it, so I was able to catch the second screening. I was interested in it because I had seen the team’s previous feature, Iceberg a few festivals ago. Both films are nearly dialogue-free, with slapstick & surrealism in simple sets with largely static cameras. It’s a love-it-or-hate-it sort of thing, I suppose, but for me they both succeed more than they fail, and are more than worth it for something totally unlike everything else I see in dark comedy. I would be very interested in seeing their short films.

Last night I caught a late screening of Hansel & Gretel, a South Korean reversal of the story, here with adults being trapped in the depths of the woods by children. A lot of it was very promising: it was well-cast & visually gorgeous with a great score, however I didn’t love it. I felt the pacing was off, it should have been about a half hour shorter, and it didn’t come close to the creep factor that I expect of Korean horror.

I’m taking tonight off, which is good because I feel like I am coming down with something, then I have a Canadian film tomorrow & a relatively slow weekend. Hmm. I should probably go find some more films!

Apparently all the cool kids are Twittering SIFF reviews, but I hate Twitter with the fire of a thousand suns, so y’all will have to bear with me over here. (Also, I might have to unsubscribe from Publicola for the duration. Retweets are not blogging, you idiots, and they’re certainly not *politics*. Why no one can understand that if we wanted to read tweets we’d be on damned Twitter is beyond me.)

But anyway. I’ve had a slightly weird festival so far, having spent more hours volunteering than seeing movies, at least in the first two days. However, since I *have* seen movies, I am ahead of a lot of the festival staff, who tend to see the first five minutes of a feature and then have to go back to work.

My first movie of the festival was Sunset Boulevard, one of the unfortunately few revival screenings I am going to be able to make. I had never seen it before, which is ridiculous considering what a Wilder fan I am, but so it goes. I loved it, of course. It was part of a TCM festival-within-the-festival, and as such was introduced by Robert Osborne, which was nice. I am a sucker for that sort of thing, as only a girl raised on AMC by Nick Clooney can be.

Second up was my first Secret film ever, which I very much enjoyed. A fast-paced, snappily scripted start to the Secret fest. I’m looking forward to the rest. The big appeal for me is that it’s a film experience that’s impossible the rest of the year, where I know absolutely nothing about a film going into it. I read too much to have that in general, so it’s pretty cool to have it here.

Next was the first film I could actually vote on, Morris: A Life With Bells On. I was initially super annoyed about it, because I found out it was a mockumentary only after I bought my ticket. I, gigantic dork that I am, wanted an actual *documentary* on Morris dance, and if I had realized it earlier I probably wouldn’t have gone. Ah well. It worked out, as this is easily one of the best non-Guest mockumentaries I have seen, and starred quite a range of familiar UK faces, including the pinnacle, Sir Derek Jacobi, and others famous perhaps only to me (Ian Hart, Richard Lumsden who was the father in “Sugar Rush”, Dominique Pinon from City of Lost Children & Delicatessen). It was well-paced & very funny, and the Morris men in the audience were duly appreciative. So, good times.

Monday I was possibly the youngest person in the audience for Gotta Dance, which is unfortunate, as it was an utterly charming movie. If you want to be reductive, it’s Young@Heart but with dance, following the first senior dance team for the Nets. It deals with more body issues and yet fewer health ones than the chorus, which makes sense. I totally loved it, and it was one of those rare films where I realized that I never once wanted to check my watch.

I wound up the long weekend with a late showing of Warlords. If you like Hong Kong historical epics (and I do), then it’s definitely worth seeing. Unfortunately, it fell to the curse of the Egyptian, with botched sound at pretty much every reel switch. (The Egyptian is famous at the festival for … technical difficulties. The worst I remember was 3 Needles, where the first 10 minutes, all English voice-over, played without sound. At least Warlords was subtitled.) Anyway. Of the cast. I suppose you all just know Jet Li, but I was in it for Andy Lau & Takeshi Kaneshiro. Andy Lau is worth seeing in anything. If you aren’t familiar with him, you should rent Infernal Affairs, where he co-stars with my boyfriend Tony Leung.

And that is all for now! Let’s see if I can keep up like this for the rest of the festival. Heh.