The fourth annual Milwaukee Film Festival boasted the
largest lineup and longest overall running time that the festival has had to
date, and as usual it offered a little of something for everyone and an
embarrassment of riches for area cinephiles.
As usual, I imagine that I missed as much great stuff as I caught – among
the most notable things I didn’t get a chance to check out were a special
presentation by J. Hoberman (in town to promote his new book Film After Film and present archival
screenings of David Lynch’s Inland Empire
and Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil), a
movie called 3,2,1…Frankie Go Boom
that apparently features world’s ugliest man Ron Perlman as a transvestite,
Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut Quartet,
Goodbye (the new film by Mohammed
Rasoulof, who directed one of last year’s festival highlights, The White Meadows), documentaries about
Bad Brains and The Sugarhill Gang, the much-hyped raunchy comedy Klown, the well-received Israeli
suspense film Policeman, and Oscar
hopeful closing-night film The Sessions. I also imagine that there are a number of
films that weren’t even on my radar that might have been excellent; the only
reason that I saw Marathon Boy, my
favorite film from last year’s festival, was because I was on the Features
Screening Committee for the festival that year (and considering that the film
hasn’t picked up any sort of critical reputation since then, it seems unlikely
that I ever would have seen it otherwise).
This year I was on the Shorts Screening Committee, meaning
that I came into the festival relatively cold as far as the features were
concerned. To be honest, there were only
a handful of short films that made the festival that I consider to be truly
memorable – with Ryan Prows’ extended action sequence Narcocorrido being the only one that stands out as a true must-see –
and I wish that the festival would consolidate the best shorts into one “best
in show” program like they used to rather than scattering nearly 100 shorts
across eight different programs. But
there were a lot of interesting feature films this year, and I’ve written brief
reviews of all of the ones that I saw in theatres below. The only one that I saw that is not included
below was an archival screening of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film Blackmail (1929), which was accompanied
by live instrumentation from the Alloy Orchestra. Suffice to say that it was an awesome
filmgoing experience, but one that doesn’t really make sense to compare to the
twenty modern-era films listed below.
11 Flowers (Wang
Xiaoshuai, China, 110 min.)
Though ostensibly based on personal events from the
childhood of director Wang Xiaoshuai (best known for his 2001 release Beijing Bicycle), this period drama is
fairly indistinguishable from the many other Chinese films set during the
Cultural Revolution. There’s nothing
particularly wrong with 11 Flowers –
the cinematography is exceptional, and the performances are uniformly strong –
but there is also nothing that really sets it apart from the pack. C+
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Alison Klayman, USA, 91
min.)
First-time feature director Alison Klayman could be accused
of making an overly conventional documentary about an extraordinary man, but Ai
Weiwei is such a fascinating and complicated figure that this film’s aesthetics
seem almost beside the point. This
thorough yet breezily entertaining portrait of China’s most prominent
subversive artist manages to deal broadly with Ai Weiwei’s struggles with
political authorities, his innovations as an artist, and his unconventional
personal life without short-changing any of these elements. B
Stunt documentarian Mads Brugger was last seen infiltrating
a North Korean cultural festival in the underappreciated gem The Red Chapel (which was one of the
highlights of the 2010 Milwaukee Film Festival). In his latest provocation, Brugger adopts the
guise of an ambassador to the Central African Republic, and gives viewers an
unprecedented glimpse into the corrupt and violent world of international
business. Brugger’s hidden cameras make
backstage deals involving bribery, diamond smuggling, and even murder
sickeningly, grippingly transparent, and it’s frankly amazing that the director
was able to escape the making of this film without getting killed himself. Unfortunately, The Ambassador lacks The Red
Chapel’s sense that Brugger is sticking up for the oppressed people who are
the victims of Imperialism – he seems more interested here in exposing powerful
political figures than digging into the psychology of the beleaguered Pygmies –
but this is still one of the most vital documentaries of the year. B
Beyond the Black
Rainbow (Panos Cosmatos, Canada, 110 min.)
Though it is one of the few festival movies that became
available on DVD before the festival started, Beyond the Black Rainbow really demands to be seen in the
theatre. A pure sensory experience, the
debut feature of writer-director Panos Cosmatos relies entirely on the power of
its audio-visual assault rather than its sketchy, besides-the-point plot or its
thin characterizations. While the movie
occasionally feels too drawn out for its own good, and loses its way toward the
end with an out of place turn into slasher movie territory, it is for the most
part a genuinely spellbinding experience, a non-stop parade of gorgeously icy
shot compositions set to an ominous synth score by Black Mountain’s Jeremy
Schmidt. Though Cosmatos was clearly
influenced by the entire lexicon of trippy filmmakers (with Kubrick,
Cronenberg, and Lynch seeming like the most obvious reference points), his
slow-motion nightmare has a genuinely unnerving sensory power that is all its
own. You’ll certainly never be able to
un-see the incredible flashback sequence that (apparently) involves a man
dipping into a pool of oil, disintegrating and re-composing in an inexplicable
field of light and smoke, and then devouring a frightened woman. B
Citadel (Ciaran
Foy, Ireland, 84 min.)
This amateurish, run-of-the-mill zombie movie should’ve gone
straight to DVD. D-
Compliance (Craig
Zobel, USA, 90 min.)
This “real-life horror story” about an incredible instance
of duplicity at a fast food restaurant caused quite a stir when it screened at
Sundance, prompting a number of walk-outs and some filmgoers loudly accusing
in-attendance writer-director Craig Zobel of misogyny. Frankly, it’s hard to see what all the fuss
was about. Zobel clearly went out of his
way to avoid making an exploitation film, and he handles the more unpleasant
moments in an understated, matter-of-fact way that gives the situation dramatic
impact without becoming offensive. A
prank caller (Pat Healy) convinces the restaurant’s manager (Ann Dowd) that one
of her cashiers (Dreama Walker) stole from a customer, and fools the manager
into conducting a degrading strip search of her employee. Zobel’s intention was to try to make sense of
this absurd yet true story, but his efforts to connect the dots are sometimes
unconvincing. The film loses credibility
around the time that the manager’s fiancée shows up to deliver a spanking to
the wrongly accused cashier; even if this actually happened, it’s tough to buy
into the depicted buildup to the event.
The decision to actually show Healy on the other end of the extended
phone call fairly early in the film also seems like a poor creative
choice. That said, Compliance is never less than compelling, with Zobel displaying a
fine sense of ominous pacing and Dowd delivering a heartbreaking performance as
the simultaneously victimized and bullying manager. C+
Elena (Andrey
Zvyagintsev, Russia, 109 min.)
This artsy take on the old “woman kills her spouse to gain
his inheritance” story is elegantly crafted but perhaps a bit too emotionally
distanced to be truly affecting. The
central relationship between the titular nurse (Nadezhda Martina) and her
wealthy husband (Andrey Smirnov) is perfectly realized; the entire history of
their relationship is clear without ever being completely spelled out, and
their loving yet frustrated attitudes towards each other are practically
written on their faces. Elena’s reason
for killing her husband (she is trying to help her dead-beat son’s family make
ends meet) is also credible and plausible, as is his decision not to give away
the money. But director Andrey
Zvyagintsev’s cold style (methodical paced, carefully composed shots) prevents
the story from having the gut-level impact that it needs to get into the next
gear. B-
The Imposter
(Bart Layton, UK, 95 min.)
An amazing true story about a Texas family that was duped by
an international conman into believing that he was their missing son gets the
full Errol Morris treatment in director Bart Layton’s compelling documentary
debut. It’s hard to complain too much
about Layton’s blatant theft of Morris’ aesthetic when the story is this
interesting and weird. Layton uncovers
some ominous and fascinating hints about why the family might have been willing
to accept a French-accented, black-haired man as their American, blond-haired
son, as well as a grimly entertaining side story about a folksy local detective’s
attempts to find what he believes will be the dead body of the missing
boy. The film arguably ends just as
things are getting really interesting, but perhaps the resulting frustration is
an appropriate statement about this open-ended, truth is stranger than fiction
tale. B
The Invisible War
(Kirby Dick, USA, 93 min.)
Documentarian Kirby Dick has argued passionately for
transparency from the MPAA ratings board (in 2006’s This Film is Not Yet Rated) and from closeted gay politicians who
vote against gay rights (in 2009’s Outrage),
but he’s never had a subject as vital and disturbing as the one he deals with
in The Invisible War. Dick’s new film is about the widespread
phenomenon of rape in the military, and viewers might be surprised by just how
big an epidemic this is. One of the film’s
many staggering statistics reveals that female soldiers in Iraq are more likely
to be raped by male colleagues than killed by enemy fire – a tragedy compounded
by the fact that many of the rapists are the commanding officers who the victims
are meant to report such crimes to.
Considering how damning the statistics are, and how tragic many of the
personal stories told in the film are, Dick’s constant use of emotionally
manipulative music seems especially obnoxious and unnecessary. Despite this film’s shortcomings as cinema,
it is a thorough and engrossing dissection of a widespread problem that is too
rarely reported on. B-
The Jeffrey Dahmer
Files (Chris James Thompson, USA, 75 min.)
This might be the most laser-focused documentary I’ve ever
seen. A total of three people are
interviewed for the talking heads segments, and they are pretty much exactly
the people you’d want to hear talk about notorious serial killer Jeffrey
Dahmer: the lead detective who
investigated Dahmer, a forensic analyst who worked on the case, and, most
fascinatingly, the killer’s former next-door neighbor. These interviews are interspersed with the
expected archival footage and staged reenactments depicting everyday moments
from Dahmer’s life. The whole thing
moves by at an engrossing clip, but the reenactments, though reasonably
well-executed, feel like unnecessary padding designed to bring the film to
(just barely) feature length. B-
Let the Bullets Fly
(Jiang Wen, China, 132 min.)
The fact that this is currently China’s highest grossing
domestic film of all time suggests that Chinese audiences have a high tolerance
for frantic mugging and confusing plot twists.
Or maybe they just expected a movie titled Let the Bullets Fly starring Chow Yun Fat to be a full-blown action
movie rather than a childishly goofy comedy with light action elements. There are a handful of amusingly eccentric
moments scattered throughout the film – as when a man cuts open his stomach to
prove that he didn’t steal jelly from a food merchant – but for the most part
this film is as dull as it is noisy and convoluted. C
Mea Maxima
Culpa: Silence in the House of God
(Alex Gibney, USA, 106 min.)
Alex Gibney is one of the most gifted documentary filmmakers
working today. Even when he is dealing
with all too familiar subject matter (such as the Iraq war in his 2007
documentary Taxi to the Dark Side) or
simply summarizing major news stories (as in 2005’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the
Room), Gibney is usually able to deal with these events in a thorough,
coherent, and entertaining matter. The
story of four deaf men’s attempt to expose the priest who sexually abused them
during Catholic school should make for Gibney’s most gripping film to date, but
the film has a surprising lack of focus, frequently cutting away from the
central narrative to spend time giving broad, common knowledge information
about the Catholic Church’s history of sexual abuse and the Vatican’s sinister
unwillingness to stop the problem. The
result is a decent but fairly generic documentary that feels like it could’ve
been directed by just about anybody. C+
Mourning (Morteza
Farshbaf, Iran, 85 min.)
The press materials for this film aren’t kidding when they
say that first-time director Morteza Farshbaf is a disciple of Abbas
Kiarostami. Every element of
Kiarostami’s distinctive aesthetic is on display here, from the many distant,
gorgeously filmed shots of cars driving down roads to the occasional conversations
where the camera focuses entirely on one of the people talking. It’s an effective style, and a fine way to
tell this simple story of a child searching for his parents, but hopefully
Farshbaf will be able to step out of his mentor’s shadow with his next
film. B-
Old Dog (Pema
Tseden, Tibet, 93 min.)
Crappy digital photography and stiff performances prevent
this film from achieving the neorealist naturalism that it aspires to. A poor family of Tibetan farmers struggle to
prevent their sheep-herding mastiff from being sold to (or stolen by) Chinese
traders (who will presumably sell the dog to wealthy families as a pet, though
this is never really explained in the narrative). While much of this film was a chore to sit
through, I’m still glad I caught it simply for the audience reaction to the
ending, which features an offscreen act of animal cruelty that provoked more
walk-outs than the extended rape in Compliance,
the graphic gore of V/H/S, and the pretentiousness
of Beyond the Black Rainbow
combined. C-
Sacrifice (Chen
Kaige, China, 132 min.)
I was afraid that Chen Kaige’s opulent period drama might be
a dull prestige film, as some of the reviews seemed to suggest, but this
non-musical adaptation of an ancient Chinese opera is actually a spectacularly
over-the-top melodrama filled with wild plot twists, exciting battles, and
numerous eccentric touches. The plot is
too complicated to adequately describe in one paragraph, but suffice to say
that it involves secret identities, an ultimatum that involves the potential
slaughter of 100 babies, and an assassination by mosquito. The story may ultimately be too broad to have
any real emotional or psychological depth, but it is still one of the most
exciting (and exquisitely filmed) action films of the year. B+
Starbuck (Ken
Scott, Canada, 109 min.)
This French-Canadian comedy is the second annual opening
night film to feature sperm donation as a major plot point. Thankfully, it’s a lot more entertaining than
last year’s forgettable Natural Selection. A 42-year old loser (Patrick Huard) discovers
that his teenage sperm donations have made him the father of 533 kids, 142 of
which are suing the hospital in hopes of revealing their father’s
identity. From there the story hits the
exact beats you’d expect it to - no one will be surprised when the donor is
initially reluctant to make contact with his kids before eventually deciding to
quietly make a difference in each of their lives – but it does so in a
relatively charming way. Writer-director
Ken Scott has a good sense of comic pacing, and he also holds the film back
from becoming too mawkish during its inevitable heartwarming moments. He is also aided by a charismatic lead
performance from Huard, whose presence will undoubtedly be missed in the
currently in-production English-language remake starring Vince Vaughn. C+
This wonderfully inventive animated film is designed for
children, but has more wit and allegorical power than most films intended for
adults. The story starts out inside an
unfinished painting, where a group of upper-class Allduns (completely drawn
characters) lord over the Halvsies (characters missing color on part of their
bodies) and the impoverished Sketchies (black and white scribbles). A star-crossed romance between a rebellious
Alldun male and a Halvsie with an uncolored face leads several characters to
escape from their painting in search of The Painter who will presumably bring
harmony to their lives. Their search
leads the characters to inhabit the worlds of several other paintings, each of
which brings a new and enchanting visual style to the film. Gorgeously animated and endlessly
entertaining, this was the highlight of this year’s festival, and one of the
best films shown anywhere this year. B+
Tales of the Night
(Michel Ocelot, France, 84 min.)
In 2000, ace French animator Michel Ocelot made a feature
anthology called Princes and Princesses
that depicted several short fairy tales by having black silhouetted characters
play against vibrantly colorful backgrounds.
Tales of the Night returns to
the aesthetic of Princes and Princesses,
even going so far as to include an identical framing device in which a boy, a
girl, and an elderly technician insert themselves into each story. It’s somewhat disappointing to see a
creatively fertile mind like Ocelot relying so heavily on things that have
worked in the past – especially on the heels of his mind-blowing Azur & Asmar, which was one of the
highlights of the 2009 Milwaukee Film Festival – but there is still a lot of
charm in this style, and the six tales told here are uniformly entertaining and
beautiful. B
Tchoupitoulas
(Bill Ross & Turner Ross, USA, 82 min.)
This New Orleans-set quasi-documentary was perhaps the most innovative
and stylistically forward-thinking film to play at the festival this year. The film ostensibly follows the adventures of
three young boys who become stranded in the French Quarter after missing the
last ferry home, but that loose narrative strand is really just an excuse to
present an impressionistic inner-city symphony that captures the feeling of
wandering around at night, catching stray glimpses of musicians, street
performers, burlesque dancers, junkies, and drag queens. The somnambulant pace sometimes becomes
tedious, especially when directors Bill and Turner Ross’ experiments aren’t
quite working, but the best moments of this grungy film are practically
miraculous. It’s impossible to describe
in words the way that the duo film the performance of a fire juggler/fire
breather, but suffice to say that it is about as trippy as anything in the much
more carefully composed Beyond the Black
Rainbow. B-
V/H/S (Adam
Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, Radio Silence,
USA, 115 min.)
Horror anthologies rarely have more than one or two
worthwhile segments, and the faux-documentary style of horror film became
tiresome the instant the The Blair Witch
Project (1999) became a sensation.
So I’m happy to report that this anthology of faux-documentary horror
stories is a wonderfully fun and inventive anomaly, displaying a surprising
degree of consistency and wit, as well as some of the best-ever use of the
rarely effective first-person camera style.
Though some segments are stronger than others, there really isn’t a weak
one in the bunch. Ti West’s tale of two
vacationing honeymooners being stalked comes the closest to failing due to
having the most generic concept (and a dumb twist ending), but it also features
one perfectly executed jolt that made the entire midnight audience gasp. The best segments are David Bruckner’s tale
of three horny douchebags bringing home the wrong girl, and capturing her
bloody rampage through one of their hidden-camera glasses; and internet
collective Radio Silence’s story about enthusiastic haunted house lovers
accidentally stumbling onto a house that is actually haunted, leading to some incredibly
impressive special effects that never disrupt the flow of the documentary-style
footage. Though a tad uneven by design, V/H/S is an ideal midnight movie, and
one of the most purely fun horror movies in years. B+
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