What would the Seattle International Film Festival be if it wasn't the biggest in the country?
Superlatives get tossed around a lot when talking movies, but some are worth attending to: for instance, the notion that Black Narcissus might be the Technicolor movie supreme, taking full expressive advantage of—make that exulting in—the process's vibrant, 1940s palette.
UK, 2010; Richard AyoadeImagine a British teen channeling equal parts Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore), Jean-Pierre Léaud (400 Blows), and Gregory (Gregory's Girl). That's Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a way too precocious kid with twin obsessions. (1) He lusts for Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige), a dead-ringer for Rita Tushingham in The Knack. (2) He loathes the smarmy New Age guru (Paddy Considine, a hoot in mullet and leather) who's just moved in next door and seems to be wooing mom (Sally Hawkins) away from his clinically depressed dad (Noah Taylor). Yes, it's another coming-of-age flick, but this self-reflexive romp has lots of deadpan wit and style, not to mention engaging geeks, repressed adults, and making-out that involves burning leg hair! —KAM
UK, 2010; David MackenzieDavid Mackenzie's end-of-the-world movie deserves longer comment, but time constraints prevent me from offering more than a few admiring words—sufficiently admiring, I hope, to send some folk off to see its final screening tomorrow. Apocalypse in Perfect Sense comes not with a bang, but the progressive loss of our senses, beginning with smell. An epidemiologist (Eva Green, soulfully gorgeous) and a chef (Ewan MacGregor, giving a subtly heartbreaking performance) meet just as the passing of human senses starts. She's grieving over a fickle love, he's just fickle, a cocksman who can't bear for a woman to sleep the night in his bed. Both of these people, for different reasons, have come to undervalue life's gifts and take the paradise of the world for granted. Miraculously, as they, and the rest of the world, are bereft of taste, smell, hearing, etc., they develop alternate, deeper ways of savoring experience. So each time "Perfect Sense" slides a little further into deprivation, men and women bounce back. Melancholy and madness slowly darken the film, but small pleasures in the possible—and the authentic passion that binds scientist and cook—make you feel that our careless species might be worth saving. -KAM
Has SIFF a clue about archival programming?Decades of attending film festivals bring a lot of memories. Obviously, it's a thrill to encounter new films that go on to challenge or captivate audiences in general release. But there's another kind of encounter that's at least as exciting and valuable, and can leave as deep a mark: the festival showcasing of a vintage film that's been lost, or lain neglected, or not made available in this country, or recently been restored to its original beauty and integrity.
Canada, 2010; Carl BessaiOne of Canada's best-known directors, Bessai charmed audiences in 2008 with a loosey-goosey movie called Mothers and Daughters, which chronicled relations between various mommies dearest and their girls. Now Fathers and Sons follows, with Sisters and Brothers soon to be released. Casually interweaving a quartet of narrative snapshots, Bessai digs into the ways dads can cruelly or comically frustrate and disappoint their offspring. Reuniting after their father's demise, four wildly different lads—lawyer, loser, New Ager, showbiz celeb—act out prickly fraternal dynamics, encouraged all their lives by a scheming paterfamilias whose snarky last will and testament provokes more of the same. A successful black businessman comes home after losing his job to the economic downturn and feels doubly betrayed, by his father's lifelong lack of ambition and the old man's donation of money his son gave him to a community sports center. A young Indo-Canadian, trying for buttoned-down dignity at his engagement party, blows a fuse over his gay dad's Bollywood flamboyance. And finally, in a farcical tale that breeds belly laughs, a sad sack Jewish teacher meets his larger-than-life progenitor for the first time over his mother's grave. Full of earthy appetite, the hulking, red-bearded fellow brings the boy up in fast-motion, playing Yiddish Zorba to repressed schlub. Fathers and Sons doesn't go much more than skin deep into character and emotion; and love's the solution to every familial contretemps. But one could do a lot worse—say, watching Letters from the Big Man—than spending some time with Bessai's Fathers and Sons. Enjoy the movie's uniquely Canuck and mostly very gentle humor, and the easygoing, sometimes improvised ensemble work from actors much admired north of the border (Benjamin Ratner, Jay Brazeau, Manoj Sood, Babz Chula, Blu Mankuma, Tyler Labine, et al.) —KAM
It's in the Seattle International Film Festival but also in the world, and Kathleen Murphy reviewed it for MSN.com/movies: "DreamWorks' favorite panda returns, charged with saving China from an evil peacock who's stockpiling WMD that will make martial arts obsolescent. Kung Fu Panda 2 packs lots of firepower: detailed, reach-out-and-touch creature design, lush settings, big 3-D action set pieces. And there's a grabby origin story explaining why both hero and villain suffer from painful mommy and daddy issues, recalling those that haunted Batman and the Penguin." Read on at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/kung-fu-panda-2/#Review_0
Australia, 2010; Richard GrayOne of those Australian movies that just lie there. Alas, the great Jacki Weaver (the crime matriarch of Animal Kingdom) has only one scene in the first reel. After that, we're on the road with the pretty but vapid Rachael Taylor as an expatriate violinist briefly returned from Nevada to attend her long-estranged father's funeral. Assume that director Richard Gray was deliberately going for softspoken and low-key—a decent impulse, but really, the temperature never rises to simmer, let alone slow boil ... as neither the direction nor the screenwriting rises above Filmmaking 101. Throughout the rather taciturn movie, key motivations and blockages are periodically announced, never explored. The one attempt at vigor is the unpersuasive heartiness of some migrant workers who arrive to pick the crop of the orange-grower (Alex Dimitriades) at whose home Taylor's character has fetched up after the obsequies. Their camaraderie induces teeth-grinding. Nice scenery, though. —RTJ
Don't expect vampire gore and supernatural thrills in this long, slow exploration of youthful angst and alienation. In his first English-language movie, writer-director Iwai Shunji - who shot, edited, and composed original music for Vampire - clearly knew precisely what kind of world and weather he wanted to create....
Kathleen Murphy gets Carrey'd away at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie/mr-popper's-penguins.2/
It's a big story and Kathleen Murphy's got it: http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/page-one-inside-the-new-york-times/
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