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The Beaches of Agnès - Les Plages d’Agnès
Agnès Varda, France
Filmmaker Agnès Varda was part of the original French New Wave, her breakthrough early work being Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) and her husband, Jacques Demy, was another of the vanguard with films such as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort. She turned eighty in May of 2008 and as a sort of celebration she made a cinematic autobiographical collage of her life, loves and films. If you're familiar with Varda's long career she self-referentially and self-mockingly uses many of the various techniques from her filmography in telling her own story, but even if you've never head her name before much less seen many of her movies it is an energetic and unconventional self portrait. Even as a fan I thought it get a little repetitive by the last thirty minutes and it is so dense with information and image that it demands strict attention, but it is a fun concoction.
GRADE: B-
The Great Buck Howard
Sean McGinly, U.S.A.
This is a pretty mainstream domestic effort I probably wouldn't have bothered with at the Festival, except that schedule-wise it fit. It's a nice enough little flick, but unambitious so ultimately uninspiring. It tells the story of Troy (Colin Hanks), who has come to the sudden realization much of the way through his expensive education that he doesn't really want to be a lawyer. So he drops out of law school without telling his father and finds a job in the paper as the road manager and assistant to The Great Buck Howard. Howard, played by John Malkovich, is a faded old style "mentalist" whose claim to fame are sixty-one performances on "The Tonight Show" - and that's the Johnny Carson "Tonight Show", not the current one with that hump Leno. He has a very old fashioned stage act and no longer plays big rooms or on television but in small venues in towns like Bakersfield, California and Akron, Ohio. His act is corny and schmaltzy but charming in its way, and Troy elects to stick around for a while. Just when he has a special new supposedly fabulous stunt to launch a twist of fate draws the media away at the crucial moment. But a buzz develops around him anyway, and striking while the iron is hot all of the sudden The Great Buck Howard is enjoying a temporary wave of popularity that even surpasses his 1970s heyday. Will he be able to maintain it long enough to give his act a true boost?
Malkovich is good as the blustery offstage and often joyously deluded onstage magician, and Colin Hanks (Orange County, The House Bunny) continues to prove he has inherited some of his father's natural charm in front of the camera. He has a different energy than the early work of poppa Tom, who has a cameo-sized role playing his on-screen father in a couple of scenes (and Tom's Playtone production company produced the film), but is instantly likable. In addition to Malkovich and Tom and Colin Hanks the cast includes some terrific actors in smaller roles like Steve Zahn, Ricky Jay, Griffin Dunne and Emily Blunt as well as a dozen celebrities playing themselves throughout, from George Takei and Gary Coleman to Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien. It chugs along as a mild diversion that is pleasant enough but as empty as a donut hole.
GRADE: C
The Friend - Der Freund
Micha Lewinsky, Switzerland
Emil (Philippe Graber) is a lonely college student who still lives at home with his clinging mother. In a local bar he has developed a crush on a girl named Larissa (Emilie Welti, who has a real music career under the name Sophie Hunger). She has a regular gig there playing guitar and singing her beautifully painful songs (see one ), songs that speak to Emil's own loneliness and isolation. But he is painfully shy and can't quite seem to approach her in an effective manner. It's an infatuation that under different circumstances may have developed into an unhealthy obsession, but one day she asks him quite out of the blue to pose as her boyfriend. She has told her parents that she's seeing someone and wants to bring him along sometime as physical proof. He has reservations, not wanting to be just a prop in her life, but also can't resist the odd opportunity. Before he can talk to her about it in depth he finds out that shortly after her proposition she was in a fatal accident. When her parents (Andrea Bürgin & Michel Voïta) and sister Nora (Johanna Bantzer) assume he was her actual boyfriend, Emil plays along.
If you think that has the makings for a sweet Romantic Comedy like While You Were Sleeping (1995), well, not this time. This is a melancholy offbeat piece about depression and regret. While it never becomes either dark enough or probing enough to be an amazing film it is involving with good performances.
GRADE: C+
Lion's Den - Leonera
Pablo Trapero, Argentina
Lion's Den is a disturbing yet somehow hopeful look at a woman in prison. This is no Roger Corman exploitation genre pic, but a unique examination of the powerful bond of motherhood. Julia (Martina Gusman) awakens one morning to find herself covered in blood. She has gone into shock, but something terrible took place in her apartment leaving much confusion, one man dead and another stabbed. Unable to help in sorting out the madness, Julia is put into the prison system until the legal process can bring charges and a trial. But Julia is also a few months pregnant and beginning to show, so instead of being put in with the general prison population she is sent to a special "maternity" cell block, full of about a dozen women as well as their infants and toddlers. In Argentina an incarcerated mother can keep her baby with her, at least until the age of four, at which point is their moms aren't being released they must either go to live with relatives or become wards of the State. It isn't really any cleaner or more pleasant than any other of the cell blocks, except that the women and children wander more freely and there are colorful drawing and diapers everywhere, kind of ["Romper Room" by way of Midnight Express.
Julia has her son in this odd environment, and though her legal troubles mount she and the other mothers find a kind of normalcy despite the confines. Later the murder trial is dwarfed by fighting her own estranged mother (Elli Medeiros) for custody of her boy. There is frustrating injustice and deplorable conditions, but in the end Lion's Den is surprisingly uplifting, in its own dark way. Martina Gusman is sort of a South American Rachel McAdams and not only easy on the eyes but quite good in a very complex role that asks her to do just about everything.
GRADE: B
__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Last edited by Holden Pike; 02-22-09 at 09:54 AM.
