SIFF Pick of the Day: Postcards from Leningrad

Postcards from Leningrad
This film certainly lives up to its SIFF billing as a dark comedy. In fact, if major themes didn’t include guerilla warfare, torture, and death, I’d almost call it adorable, thanks to the quirky innocence of its unnamed six-year-old narrator (Claudia Usubillaga), the daughter of two rebels in ’60s Venezuela. As she relates her adventures, you find yourself getting goose-bumps and the giggles at the same time. Crucial moments include her nonsensical explanation of her father’s plan to escape from prison by becoming “Frog Man,” which we see—and comprehend how it’s been (mis)translated to a child’s understanding. Writer-director Mariana Rondón’s reliance on a child narrator leads to a somewhat disjointed narrative, with a few loose ends left untied. It can be a chore to connect Postcards’ many jumps in time, but the film always holds your interest, leaving you satisfied and slightly creeped out. It’s the pistol-packing Hispanic love child of Donnie Darko and Amélie. (NR) EMMA BREYSSE Pacific Place: 9:15 p.m. (Also: 4:30 p.m. Thurs., June 12.)

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

Late Review: The End

The End
Every first-time documentary filmmaker should be blessed with a family that’s colorful, dysfunctional, or mildly eccentric. But criminal? Dangerous? Notorious? Those are some of the qualities Nicola Collins finds among her father and his old cronies from London’s East End. Most in their 60s, most looking much older (thanks to decades of hard living, hard fighting, and jail time), her dad and his mates speak in old-school Cockney you wouldn’t believe existed outside of Guy Ritchie movies. (In fact, Collins and her twin sister acted in Snatch.) Subtitles provide some clarity. This near-extinct enclave values loyalty and family above all; you get the sense that if it were anyone else but Collins asking, they’d remain mum. Or worse. Collins, a former fashion model, shoots her subjects up close in high-contrast black-and-white, often distressing the video to look like film stock. These bruisers don’t really need the aesthetic dressing: They speak in earnest yet evasive monologues to her camera. There’s no narration, almost no questions from the director. On her behalf, one old tough asks rhetorically, “Any regrets? Getting caught, yeah!” Snapshots and a few newsreels from their ’60s heyday reveal a youth often later wasted during decades in prison. Collins’ subjects won’t admit directly to their crimes. There’s a kind of rueful pride to their misdeeds, even among those who later found Jesus. No one’s sorry, exactly, but the mere fact that they and Collins’ father (Les Falco) cooperated on The End implies that they wish they had the opportunities she now enjoys. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Harvard Exit: 9:15 p.m. Tues., June 10.

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

SIFF Pick of the Day: Encarnacion

Encarnacion
You’ve head about Argentina and plastic surgery. Reportedly, it’s the national pastime down there. Baring her body for us to see, playing an aging bombshell (usually called “Erni” for Encarnación), Silvia Pérez has clearly had some work done. She’s not ashamed of it, the movie’s not ashamed of it, and her character wants more of it—if she’s to keep working, that is, if she’s to keep attracting men. Erni is desperate, dignified, sad, and there’s not a whole lot else happening in Encarnación. She goes to auditions in Buenos Aires, films a commercial, travels to the birthday party of a niece in the campo. And she lands a few men—one a regular, the other not. With deliberate pacing and considerable sympathy, director Anahí Berneri (A Year Without Love) gives her heroine emotional space to consider her life. There’s no suggestion that Erni is deluded about her sagging beauty or age; she just has to work that much harder. (Tending her fan site, she tells her teenage Web master to remove her age, 48, and emphasize her older photos.) I can’t imagine any American actress of Pérez’s age—IMDb her if you must—letting the lens so close, letting her clothes slide off so readily. And she looks great. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Pacific Place: 6:30 p.m. (Also: 4:30 p.m. Mon., June 9.)

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

SIFF Pick of the Day: Timecrimes

Timecrimes
This Spanish-language thriller is the kind of twisty, low-budget B-movie that gets Hollywood panting for the remake rights. Sure enough, David Cronenberg has reportedly expressed an interest. It’s easy to see why. The film is an enormously entertaining antidote to this year’s generally morose SIFF line-up. It practically begs for a second viewing. During a quiet retreat to the country, a man spies some suspicious activity in the forest through his binoculars. He goes out to investigate, and then things…happen. No spoilers here. Knowing more would ruin the fun. Don’t read anyone else’s description, either. Just make sure you’re paying attention during the first 20 minutes. Not since Memento has a movie required such complete focus and a prompt theater arrival. Timecrimes may lack a certain subtlety and emotional gravitas, but when you’re on the edge of your seat the entire time, who cares? (R) FRANK PAIVA Pacific Place: 9:30 p.m. (Also: Egyptian, 7 p.m. Sun., June 15.)

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

The Great Buck Humble

From left, Colin Hanks, John Malkovich, and Ricky Jay. (Photo: courtesy of SIFF)

The Great Buck Howard screened for the press this week, too late for deadline for our June 4 issue now on the street. Writer-director Sean McGinly and cast member Colin Hanks (son of Tom) are in town right now, and will be conducting a Q&A following tonight's 7 p.m. screening at the Egyptian. (You'll get a second chance at the Uptown, minus the live talent, on Sunday, June 8 at 11 a.m.; we'll try to post a capsule review before then.)

I sat down with McGinly and Hanks an hour or two ago, and will comb through my notes and recorder for a posting soon. (The film will likely open in Seattle theaters this fall.)

In the meantime, a couple random thoughts on the star, director, and movie....

Continue reading "The Great Buck Humble"

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

Which is the Nastier Barely Legal-Old Granddad Smooch?

What's gnarlier: Sir Ben Kingsley and Mary Kate Olsen locking lips in The Wackness, or Frank Langella and Lauren Ambrose (Claire from Six Feet Under) going at it in last year's sensational Starting Out in the Evening? I've seen the latter but not the former, but considering I think any human kissing Mary Kate Olsen is gross, Dirty Old Gandhi gets my vote. But the thought of either makes my dong shrink into my stomach.

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

SIFF Pick of the Day: The Wave

The Wave
What will it take to unite today’s youth and get them politically involved? That question lies at the center of this terrific, disturbing German drama about a high-school social experiment gone wrong. During a weeklong study of authoritarianism, an unorthodox teacher encourages his complacent students to start their own society to experience life under a dictatorship. Things soon (surprise, surprise) take a turn for the worse, with teens dressing in uniform, attacking outsiders, and giving suspicious hand salutes. The script is based on real-life events in California, and the movie gains immediate weight by moving things to Germany, where the troubling implications are increased exponentially. The young performers give believable performances that are painful to watch as their initial idealism about a life free from social hierarchy slowly disintegrates. Jürgen Vogel is even more heartbreaking as their instructor, a man seeking any method to reach his students. His is a bitter lesson indeed. (NR) FRANK PAIVA Pacific Place: 6:30 p.m. (Also: 1:30 p.m. Sat., June 7.)

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

Late Bloomers, Late Review

Oops, amid the chaos of SIFF, we neglected to include Gavin Borchert's review of this Swiss film in our June 4 issue. But you still have a second chance to see it, if you're so inclined.

Late Bloomers
From the land of neutrality, milk chocolate, and—as Orson Welles’ Harry Lime memorably put it in The Third Man—the cuckoo clock comes this formulaic feel-good comedy. Lest you thought those were strictly American exports, know that this mercilessly adorable confection became Switzerland’s biggest box-office success of the last 25 years. It’s essentially Chocolat a bit further east, with sex instead of food, and the magical realism omitted: A widow in the picture-postcard village of Trug decides to revive her long-dormant talent for sewing and embroidery and open a lingerie shop, liberating her friends, and eventually the whole village, from their smug Swiss ruts via the power of satin and lace. The opposition includes the stuffy local politician who yammers on about tradition and morality, and the local vicar—the widow’s son—who’s such a colossal prick he denounces Mom from the pulpit while cheating on his wife. Every single plot point gets resolved exactly as you guess it will; it’s good twinkly fun for any moviegoer who doesn’t mind not being surprised. (NR) GAVIN BORCHERT Uptown: 6:30 p.m. Sat., June 7.

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

SIFF Pick of the Day: Boystown

Boystown
In this Spanish farce, the (gay) villain is handsome, buff, smooth-skinned, and well-dressed, and the (gay) heroes have beards and tummies. In other words, this film could never have been made in America—it would alienate the core audience. Connecting condo-ification with murder will resonate on Capitol Hill, sure, but the linking of compulsive depilation/gym-going with sociopathy will be a harder sell. The underwear-model-esque villain, you see, wants to gentrify Chueca, Madrid’s dowdy but cozy gay ghetto. Whenever some old lady declines to sell her apartment—so it can be converted into an airy white box and flipped to a pair of nesting twinks—he bumps her off. One of the victims has willed her apartment to Rey, so he and his boyfriend, Leo, become prime suspects. Not just suspects, but potential victims: Adorably scruffy and down-market, Rey and Leo pay too much attention to X-Men comics and not enough to ab development—thus rendering themselves unfit, figuratively and literally, for the planned gaytopia. (Rey’s idea of roleplay/foreplay is to Scotch-tape ballpoint pens to his knuckles in emulation of Wolverine’s claws.) The arrival of Rey’s chain-smoking harridan of a mother complicates matters, but a sharp-tongued, severely phobic private eye (think Carol Burnett as directed by Almodóvar) sorts them out again. (NR) GAVIN BORCHERT Harvard Exit: 9:15 p.m. (Also: 4 p.m. Sun. June 8.)

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

SIFF Pick of the Day: Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel

In the relatively innocent early ’60s, West 42nd Street was a carnival of pinball parlors, freak shows, and, mainly, movie theaters. Some offered western triple bills for 40 cents. Others—smaller, shabbier, and forbidden to kids—featured Olga’s House of Shame. What my 13-year-old mind could not then grasp was why, along with amateur documentaries of “nudist-camp volleyball,” these theaters also showed atrocity footage of Nazi concentration camps—was it because there were naked women there, too? That pornographic juxtaposition of horniness and horror is the subject of Ari Libsker’s Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel. Named for the German prison camps in which they were set, the “stalags” were soft-core S&M porn in which downed U.S. or British pilots were abused by lustful, bodacious “female SS brutes,” ultimately repaying their tormentors in kind. Far too short at 60 minutes, Stalags raises many more questions than it can possibly answer, and the whole issue of Holocaust porn deserves fuller treatment. The abrupt, inconclusive ending has the effect of throwing the problems inherent in teaching, dramatizing, or even representing the Holocaust back at the viewer. The least that can be said is that these issues are raised. However artless its presentation, Stalags presents material that’s difficult to shake off and impossible to dismiss. SIFF Cinema, 321 Mercer St. (McCaw Hall), 324-9996, www.siff.net. $9-$11. 4:30 p.m. (Also: 9 p.m. Sun. June 8.) J. HOBERMAN

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (0)

SIFF Pick of the Day: Island Etude

Island Etude
Chen Huai-En's autobiographically inspired circuit around Taiwan will make you want to grab your bike. In fact, I recommend bicycling to and from the movie. It’s very much a film about youth, freedom, and transition, as handsome deaf college student Chiao-hsi (Tung Ming-hsiang) pedals the coastal highway during a school holiday. His encounters form a gentle picaresque: a spoiled, bratty fellow biker; a TV crew making some kind of wacky commercial; a cute backbacking model from Lithuania who befriends him; retired factory workers on a bus tour; teenagers spray-painting a seawall. There’s not much more plot than the mileposts he passes. But without stating as much, Island Etude is a portrait of Taiwan, an impressionistic weeklong survey of life on several rungs of society, as seen through the open eyes of Chiao-hsi. The film is a journal of sorts, filled with sketches of kindness and short, meaningful conversations. Unsurprisingly, given that Chen has been a cinematographer for Hou Hsiao-hsien (A City of Sadness, etc.), this travelogue is often gorgeous in an unfussy sort of way. There’s a kind of restlessness to each frame, not a static magazine pictorialism. "Something you don’t do now, you’ll never do,” the student says in one exchange. That’s the spirit of the film—keep moving, take notes, and make sense of them later. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Pacific Place: 6:30 p.m. (Also: 4 p.m. Wed., June 3.)

Topics: Film and SIFF 2008

Permalink | Comments (3)

SIFF Pick of the Day: You, the Living

You, the Living
The title is from Goethe: “Rejoice, you the living ... ere dark Lethe’s sad wave wetteth thy fugitive foot.” A trolley car in the film bears that underworld river’s name for a destination, and everybody in this film by Swedish director Roy Andersson (Songs From the Second Floor) is destined to go there someday. But while they’re still alive, he treats us to vignettes of these inherently hilarious humans, most of them caught in midstare by a becalmed camera and the greenish tinge of a world’s last days. A disgruntled woman chases off her boyfriend and sits on a park bench, singing and complaining. A man recalls a nightmare in which he is condemned to fry for a tablecloth trick. My favorite vignette is one near the end, as a forlorn girl dreams of being a newlywed in her kitchen when the scenery mysteriously rolls by outside and wellwishers stop her and her guitar-playing groom for a sendoff on, as it turns out, a train. (NR) FRAKO LODEN Egyptian: 9:30 p.m. (Also: Pacific Place, 4 p.m. Fri., June 6.)

Topics: SIFF 2008 and Thread Count

Permalink | Comments (0)

SIFF Pick of the Day: Strangers

Strangers
Ladies, tell me you wouldn't sleep with Liron Levo the first time you met him. Tall, taut-bellied, with a strong nose and soulful eyes, he looks like a commando—which his character, Eyal, may be back in Israel. Rana (Lubna Azabal) meets Eyal on the subway in Berlin, where both are visiting for the 2006 World Cup. They're tourists who communicate haltingly and endearingly in English, their second (or third) language, meaning it's a lot easier to kiss than speak. Strangers is nothing if not contrived in its set-up and ensuing culture clash (Rana turns out to be a Palestinian living in Paris), and it floods the background of this hasty, star-crossed romance with TV scenes of Israel's invasion into Lebanon. Sounds overdetermined, but Strangers is so much better than that: The two leads are utterly charming as they gambol about Berlin (mostly improvising as they go), followed by Ram Shweky's excellent hand-held HD camerawork that was clearly grabbed, guerilla-style during the actual World Cup. Strangers is all about immediacy, the present moment, no matter how much the politics of the past. It also barrels along without wasting a minute, jumping from Berlin to Paris, where Rana's leftist friends provide a devastating café snapshot of European anti-Semitism. (No spoilers about who gets the last word.) Levo you may recognize from past films by Amos Gitai; Belgian actress Azabal had a small, impact role in Paradise Now. The film has a distributor and will probably play Seattle this fall. Don't wait for that. If Strangers tells us anything, it's that we should always act immediately for the sake of love. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Uptown: 6:30 p.m. (Also: 4:30 p.m. Mon., June 2.)

Topics: SIFF 2008 and Thread Count

Permalink | Comments (0)

SIFF Pick of the Day: Saving Luna

Saving Luna
Here's a small wonder: A clear-eyed documentary about environmentalism and government bureaucracy. (Yes, such a thing is possible.) Luna is a baby orca separated from his family who plays with boaters off the coast of Vancouver Island. As Luna becomes a tourist attraction, his safety is compromised, and action must be taken. The meat of the film deals with the selfishness of us humans—so unlike the whales!--as various groups squabble over Luna's fate. Saving Luna has terrific editing and beautiful underwater photography. On land, things are considerably uglier. (Director Suzanne Chisholm will likely attend both screenings.) A warning to parents, however: While the movie is playing in SIFF's Films4Families series, it's probably too serious, complicated, and sad for most children. (Parents who read about this recent Northwest news story will know what I'm talking about—the heartbreak that could’ve been avoided.) This is not another Free Willy. Do not bring overly sensitive kids under, say, age 12, who are prone to tears. Everyone else should get in line. (NR) FRANK PAIVA SIFF Cinema: 11 a.m. (Also: 1:30 p.m. Sun., June 8.)

Topics: SIFF 2008 and Thread Count

Permalink | Comments (0)

SIFF Pick of the Day: Idiots and Angels

Idiots and Angels
Cult animator Bill Plympton's hand-penciled expressionism is most recognizable from his shorts, likely because his deadpan, spatial-distorting sight gags often can't sustain momentum in feature form, almost by design. Yet his beautifully creepy fifth film somehow transcends this limitation and proves his most fully realized yet, a grim fairy-tale comedy about a truculent businessman who discovers angelic wings sprouting from his back. Told without a word of dialogue, the mean bastard undergoes a spiritual awakening as his new appendages thwart his every transgression, a humiliating rise-fall-and-rise tale that affects a bar owner and his salsa-dancing wife, a conniving surgeon, and a town full of arson victims. Less concerned with gags than nimble storytelling and wide-screen aesthetics (every brooding corner of the frame is blotted in monochromatic noir hues), Plympton mines elegance from the utterly gonzo. (NR) AARON HILLIS Harvard Exit: 9:30 p.m. (Also: 4 p.m. Sat., May 31.)

Topics: SIFF 2008 and Thread Count

Permalink | Comments (9)