Archive for the ‘Philadelphia Film Festival’ Category
Filed under: George Clooney, Philadelphia Film Festival
Last month I wrote a discussion piece asking if there were too many film festivals, and as some commenters pointed out, festivals are the only way some folks can get a gander at indie films that might not ever be released, or see movies that will have a limited release and take quite a while to make it back to their town.
Philadelphia is sharing some brotherly film love with its own international film festival, which takes place from October 15th through the 19th. The festival will kick off with the premiere of Law Abiding Citizen and end with Precious, with plenty of good stuff in between, from international indies like Fish Tank to the rabble-rousing Antichrist. Other notables include The Men Who Stare at Goats, Serious Moonlight (a sweet and funny film written by the late Adrienne Shelley and directed by Cheryl Hines), The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair, and lots of other great stuff. Check the full line-up after the jump, and to buy tickets or get more information, visit the official website.
Filed under: Drama, Foreign Language, Horror, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie, Philadelphia Film Festival
You want a movie that’ll really test your limits for Japanese genre weirdness? Here it is: Torico’s Wicked Flowers, or as I like to call it: “What Saw 5 might look like if it were co-directed by David Lynch, Rod Serling and the Pang brothers.” Here the target is not merely a group of slacker teenagers, but the the generation as a whole. Yes, all you Xbox-addicted, bong-smoking, living-off-your-parents’-income S.O.B.s … director Tirico has something he wants to say to the whole lethargic lot of you, and he’ll use lures like pretty girls and free video games to get you in the front door.
Here’s the simple synopsis: An aimless young guy eats some poisoned pizza, logs into a mysterious online video game, and awakens to find himself in a “real life” video game, where the contestants and the prizes are real — but unfortunately so are the kills. The kid’s given a bunch of crazy rules about dice rolls, puzzle solutions and his competitors, and then it’s off to the grungy playing field full of dead bodies and, well, some really weird hosts. Plus, everyone’s poisoned, a bunch of machine-gun-toting freaks populate the scene … and there’s this really creepy automated bunny rabbit who tells you what game level comes next.
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Independent, Theatrical Reviews, Review Roundup, Cinematical Indie, Philadelphia Film Festival
Even if the film festival guides hadn’t reminded me that the low-key indie comedy American Fork came from one of the Napoleon Dynamite producers … I think I might have figured it out on my own. That’s not to say that the films are all that similar, really, but that they both feature main characters who are grown-ups on the exterior and trapped in a state of perpetually unpleasant adolescence beneath the surface. Not particularly deep beneath the surface, either.
First-time screenwriter Hubbel Palmer stars as Tracy Orbison, a 6-foot-4-inch massive mound of a young man, and one who has only a few minor things going for him. Tracy seems to enjoy his dead-end job at the local supermarket, and he’s got a mother and a sister who genuinely seem to care for the guy, but beyond that Tracy is as insecure, immature and rudderless as a guy can possibly be. The clueless yet strangely ingratiating misfit bounces from hobby to hobby and from acquaintance to acquaintance, desperately looking for something (and someone) to share his time with. Failing that, the guy simply loves to jot away in his journal.
One of Tracy’s more recent obsessions is that of acting: He tries to befriend a local actor, a jackass who turns out to be as arrogant as he is insincere — and Tracy greets the eventual disappointment with a sigh known only to the frequently disappointed. Then he tries to befriend a teenager who just started working at the supermarket — but the kid’s sleazy friends abuse Tracy’s good nature in a really terrible way. And then come some seriously unpleasant accusations that have Tracy ducking into alleys, afraid to even show his face in his own neighborhood.
Filed under: Drama, Foreign Language, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie, Philadelphia Film Festival
A darkly amusing, strangely insightful and very well-acted French romance drama, Olivier Masset-Depasse’s Cages is about how far one person will go to hang on to a passionate love affair that, for a variety of unimpeachable reasons, has simply run its course. It’s a movie about that panicky feeling you get when you know the romance has died and, as such, Cages is almost too personal and painful to truly “enjoy” in the traditional sense, but Masset-Depasse keeps the story moving along briskly — even if his third act destinations seems ported in from a weirder and less interesting film.
Anne Coesens plays Eve, a paramedic who’s madly in love with her bar-owner husband Damien, but when a horrific ambulance accident leaves Eve with a seriously pronounced stutter, she retreats into herself and becomes a silent and self-pitying shell of her former self. After a year passes and Eve is still struggling to form full words, Damien drops a bombshell: He’s worried that Eve is no longer than woman he once fell in love with … oh, and there’s a seriously sexy beer distributor called Lea who just might have caught Damien’s eye.
Filed under: Foreign Language, Horror, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie, Philadelphia Film Festival
When Night Watch made it to U.S. multiplexes (with a promise of Day Watch and Dusk Watch firmly made), I didn’t expect the (very weird) movie to kick-start an outpouring of Russian genre flicks. And since I’m one of the horror geeks who didn’t much care for Night Watch, I wasn’t exactly elated at the prospect of more. Well, Day Watch hits theaters later this year, and now comes a J-horror-inspired snoozer called Dead Daughters. which presents perhaps fifteen interesting minutes that have been scattered across an oppressive 119-minute frame.
Truth be told, Dead Daughters has maybe enough plot to cover a half-decent episode of Masters of Horror, but the flick just ambles, rambles and wanders its way through an endless litany of pointless conversations and painfully uneventful digressions, which means that whatever potentially compelling concepts it may contain are lost amidst the tedium. It also doesn’t help that director Pavel Ruminov is absolutely and single-mindedly intent on shooting every single scene — be it conversational, exposition-laden, or scary-style — with his camera slowly panning from left to right, up and down, sometimes with the camera lens focused firmly on … nothing. As characters talk we get quivery panoramas of their locations, the camera forever shivering as if the cinematographer was really drunk, really inexperienced, or really pretentious.
Filed under: Drama, Horror, Independent, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie, Philadelphia Film Festival
The always-reliable Timothy Hutton is front and center in the Spanish sci-fi production The Kovak Box — but it’s 78-year-old veteran character actor David Kelly who steals the movie whole. That’s not to imply that the pair of performances is all that Daniel Monzon’s flick has to offer; on the contrary, it’s quite the nifty little mind-bender that I’d heard it was. Sort of a feature-length Twilight Zone episode that gets progressively stranger and more aggressive as it plays on, The Kovak Box is a low-key, compelling and surprisingly crisp little experience.
Hutton plays a famous science-fiction writer named David Norton. He and his girlfriend are attending a conference at a swanky hotel on the island of Mallorca. Things go more than a little haywire after Norton’s girlfriend (actually, fiancee by this point) leaps out of the hotel window and splatters herself all over the street. (I’m not spoiling anything; this scene arrives within the first seven minutes.) Meanwhile in another section of the island, a young woman called Silvia picks up her phone, hears a tinny recording of Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday,” and promptly leaps out her own window. Unlike Norton’s fiancee, Silvia survives her plummet.
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Foreign Language, Horror, Tribeca, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie, Philadelphia Film Festival
I can think of a lot of adjectives that could adequately describe Gyorgy Palfi’s Taxidermia: absurd, ugly, disgusting, surreal, confusing, arcane, difficult, ponderous, and (intermittently) fascinating. I’ve no problem admitting that I just didn’t “get it,” which doesn’t mean that I’ll blindly dismiss the thing and call it a rotten movie — nor can I find much praise for the film, either. It’s a truly “out there” experience, I’ll give the movie that, but unless you’ve got a pretty strong affection for Hungarian films that deal with sexual deviance, non-stop vomiting, ridiculous obesity and “creative” taxidermy I can’t imagine you’d bother with the whole film.
Entirely lacking in what you’d call a “traditional narrative structure,” Taxidermia is actually sort of an anthology, and the only link between the three stories is the fact that we’re dealing with three generations of the same family. (If there’s any connective tissue between the miniature trilogy, feel free to let me know what it might be.) I “get” that all three sections deal with the act of expelling things from one’s body — be it fluid, food or vital organ — but beyond that I’m stuck firmly in head-scratching country. At least Palfi knows how to frame a stylish shot when he needs one … which is often.
Filed under: Foreign Language, Horror, Thrillers, Theatrical Reviews, Cinematical Indie, Philadelphia Film Festival
Prolific “J-horror” machine Takashi Shimizu presents (yes, another) collection of creepy kids, contorted creeps and convoluted chaos with Unholy Women (aka Kowai onna), a three-part horror anthology that (thankfully) is just entertaining enough to make us forgive the general air of familiarity that permeates two of the three stories. The best thing about these anthologies (and believe me, there are a lot of ‘em) is that if one section doesn’t blow you away, you won’t have to wait very long for it to be over. Taken on a segment-by-segment basis, Unholy Women is A) not bad, B) very amusingly bizarre, and C) snail-slow and uneventful.
Story one is Keita Amemiya’s Rattle Rattle, and it’s an enjoyably simple story about a young woman who gets dropped off by her boyfriend one night, only to spend the next several hours being chased by a really freaky (and amazingly persistent) poltergeist of some sort. The tale moves quickly enough and offers a double-twist ending that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense … but at least it’s interesting. The spooky effects are the highlight in this section, although they’re nothing an astute J-fan hasn’t seen before.
Filed under: Action, Animation, Comedy, Foreign Language, Horror, Independent, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Thrillers, Noir, Mystery & Suspense, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Philadelphia Film Festival
Damn this makes me happy. The Philadelphia Film Festival has always been known for some very fine “genre-style” programming, from U.S. horror fare to the oddest of offbeat imports. So when programmer Lewis Tice dropped me a press release on the 2008 selections, I dove into the email with much enthusiasm. (More specifically, I muttered “Oooh” and then I read the email.)
As much as I hate re-posting press releases with little or no commentary, the truth is that I’m knee-deep in SXSW awesomeness, so I don’t have much time to commentate. And since I certainly wasn’t going to let someone ELSE post something about PHILLY, the sad truth is that you’re getting rooked here. Just movie titles and synopses, with none of that oh-so-awesome Weinberg insight. Try not to hold it against the Philadelphia Film Festival that I’m so lame. Check out the list of films after the jump …
Continue reading Philly Film Fest Announces ‘Danger After Dark’ Slate!
Filed under: Exhibition, Philadelphia Film Festival
This rant will likely be of interest only to those of you who frequent festivals or are fortunate enough to be able to attend repertory film showings with any regularity. If you do fall into either of those categories, on the other hand, you’ll almost certainly be able to sympathize.
I’ve been spending a lot of time at the Philadelphia Film Festival this week. Earlier today I went, with some excitement, to see a well-reviewed French action film called In the Arms of My Enemy. Imagine my disappointment when, upon arrival, I discovered that they did not in fact have a print of the film. Instead, they would be showing it to us from a DVD, which would be projected onto the screen.
Continue reading Fan Rant: Surprise! You Get to Watch a Projected DVD!
