2009 Portland International Film Festival

One of my favorite film-related things about Portland, Oregon is the annual International Film Festival. It's usually fifteen or sixteen straight days of seeing between two and three movies a day, sometimes four or five a day on the weekends. I usually get to see somewhere between thirty and forty flicks. Some are U.S. films we get to see before their official wide release, which is nice, but the best aspect is having access to a sampling of cinema from around the world, some of which will never get distribution in the States, not even on the art house circuit. I have seen some amazing movies over the past few years. Some middling entries and a few outright stinkers, too, but on balance many, many more films worth seeing than not.

The 32nd Portland International Film Festival is almost here! Better still, because I am a member of the Northwest Film Center, which puts the fest together, I also have access to the press screenings before the PIFF begins. These screenings start next week. Beginning Tuesday I'll be seeing movies such as The Baader Meinhoff Complex (the German film just announced as Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film), the Italian modern Mob movie Gomorrah, the Norwegian comedy O'Horten and the Iranian The Song of Sparrows. Can hardly wait.

HERE is the list of the seventy-eight features and HERE the thirty-seven shorts from forty-two countries that I'll have to choose from.

In this thread I'll be doing little reviews of the movies I see (at least until I burn out, which usually happens by the end of the third week). Stay tuned, MoFos.

__________________
"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

I hate you a little bit. I really want to see The Baader Meinhoff Complex. You lucky dog.

__________________
We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

How do these work, exactly? Can anyone just show up and buy tickets? And do you already have an itinerary and whatnot all fixed upon, or do you just sorta free ball it?

Yes to all of that.



You can buy tickets at the door, though with the more popular screenings you risk being either shut out or relegated to a bad seat. But you can purchase them up until the day before either at the office or (I believe) on-line.

What I do is different, which is why I'm a little fuzzy on the whole ticket thing. I am a member of the Northwest Film Center, at the "Director" level of their "Silver Screen Club", which means I pay for my membership at the beginning of the year ($250) but then all screenings - not just the Festival but the other programs they run throughout the year - are free admission (and I get invited to whatever early screenings of new movies they get during the year - usually three or four of 'em). It also means that as long as I show up at least ten minutes before any of the PIFF screenings I am guaranteed a seat. This gives me limitless flexibility in scheduling screenings. I can change my mind on my way to the theatre if I want and see something else.

In general the weekend screenings fill all their seats, or close to it. But if you go to one of the weeknight screenings - especially the "late" ones that start around 9:00-ish, the theatres are often only half full.


The whole thing is rather like a narcotic to a moviedork like me.

Of the films on offer I've only seen The chaser and Gommorah, both worth watching, especially the former. Looking forward to your reviews for the rest...

__________________
http://www.last.fm/user/diezelpower/

OK, the Festival hasn't started yet but my viewings have.


The Baader Meinhof Complex
Uli Edel, Germany

A compelling if oddly amoral dramatization of the rise of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. 1968 was one of the most turbulent years in recent history, most infamously for the assassinations of King and Robert Kennedy in the U.S. but it was a year of global unrest. A prelude to the bloody incidents of '68 was a June 2nd, 1967 riot in Berlin. A growing arch-conservative government and mindset in Germany in the 1960, including many ex-Nazis still in local and national positions of authority and a mostly conservative press, led to a student protest movement. They were also concerned with Western imperialism, as they saw it, including the U.S. war in Vietnam. During a public but peaceful protest of a West German visit by the Shah of Iran the protesters were brutally attacked by pro-Iranian transplants and the Berlin Police. During the melee one of the unarmed protesters was shot and killed by a Cop, the European Kent State three years before the shooting of those American student protesters. In his subsequent trial the officer was acquitted. This coupled with the 1968 attempted assassination of the most vocal of the students by a young conservative fired-up by the anti-Communist rhetoric against the dissenters not only galvanized the protest movement but radicalized and eventually militarized a small portion of it.

That splinter group eventually became the RAF, but were initially known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang in the press and by the Police, named after two of the leaders in Andreas Baader and journalist-turned criminal Ulrike Meinhof. The film shows the atmosphere and events that lead to the further radicalization of the group, which went from vandalism to bombings to robberies to hijackings, kidnappings and assassinations of their own in retaliation, becoming a band of urban guerillas who used some of the same methods of revolution as Che Guevara and the burgeoning radical Islamic terrorist groups forming during these same years.

A very good group of actors play the key members of the RAF, including Moritz Bleibtreu (Das Experiment, Munich) as Baader, Johanna Wokalek (Aimée & Jaguar) as Gudrun Ensslin and Martina Gedeck (The Lives of Others) as Ulrike Meinhof. The great Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire, Downfall) is Horst Herold, seemingly the only person in the West German government who recognizes the problem as having deeper and more complicated roots than the insane radical terrorists they were painted as. The initial members of the RAF were all killed or captured in the 1970s, but the second and third generations survived well into the 1980s.

Interestingly the movie, directed by Uli Edel and based on the non-fiction book by Stefan Aust, takes no real moral position one way or the other on the increasingly brutal actions of the RAF. I suppose this lack of judgment could be interpreted by some as a sort of implied complicit condoning of their actions and the movement, but to me it played sympathetic to the underlying base motivations without making heroes of the participants, whose brutal and murderous acts are shown without varnish or absolution. Ultimately this lets the viewer understand a bit of how a "terrorist" gets to the point of action, how the leap is made between civil unrest and armed action, but minus the radical religious element that is intertwined with the 21st century idea of what a terrorist is. It's an odd and effective approach to the material, and the Bruno Ganz character is the key to the film's purpose.

GRADE: B



Gamorrah
Matteo Garrone, Italy

Another amoral, unblinking crime piece, this one centered on the day-to-day brutality of the modern Camorra, a Mafia-like web of criminals who control much of Naples. The Camorra is quite different from the Costa Nostra of Sicily, the Mafia that has been immortalized, familiarized and even romanticized by everything from The Godfather to "The Sopranos". That structure of crime "family" bares little resemblance to the ragtag competing clans as dramatized in Gamorrah. Most of the action and characters are centered in one small area, a large slum-like complex where we meet a handful of souls trying to survive in the climate of drug dealing, robberies and almost daily murders, including Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo) a tailor, Totò (Nicolo Manta) a teenage delivery boy of groceries, Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato) an aging bagman, and Marco and Ciro (Marco Macor & Ciro Petrone), two brash wannabes who find a cache of the gangster's guns and start a crime spree of their own.

There is no romance attached to these criminals, and even the higher-ups who have more of the money and power seem to be no better off than their brutal agents in the bloody streets, and no safer. There is no sense of "honor" among these thieves, just a never-ending stream of violence and terror. It's a refreshing reboot of gangsterism awash in realism instead of cinematic mythology.

GRADE: B+

Nice reviews. Incidentally, I've just noticed that both of those are playing at the local multiplex. One good thing about living in Europe, the odd chance that you'll get to see a non-English film outside the art theater...sweet.

Thanks.

The PIFF starts a week from tonight, but I'll see probably six or seven more flicks before then. None today, but going to a double-header tomorrow.

The opening night film is the world premiere of Coraline, the animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman's book by Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. The Phil Knight-owned LAIKA animation studio is here in Portland and they worked on Coraline for the past three years. Should be cool.

I love that Neil Gaiman is writing children's books now. Hook 'em while they're young.

O'Horten
Brent Hamer, Norway

Endearing character piece about a Norwegian train engineer forced into retirement at the age of sixty-seven who doesn't quite know what to do with himself without his job. Bård Owe plays the man, a man so strange and off-beat that his name is Odd. Without a job to go to Odd O'Horten wanders around Oslo, mostly at night, and has inadvertent adventures, meeting all sorts of interesting people, and eventually moves toward not just a contentment but even a realization that his best days are still ahead of him, not behind him. There are some terrific episodes as Odd goes from virtually invisible in society to a lover of life, and it's a joy watching the lanky and deadpan Bård Owe go from passive and sleepy to a vital and smiling.

Writer/director Hamer scored big with his wonderful breakthrough Kitchen Stories (2004) that announced to an international audience he had a gentle and poignant comic cinematic voice in the same class as Aki Kaurismäki, Dusan Makavejev and early Jim Jarmusch. His follow-up was in English, Factotum, an adaptation of some of Charles Bukowski's writings, and it was far less impressive (a misstep, actually). But O'Horten reaffirms Brent Hamer as a filmmaker to seek out.

GRADE: A-



The Song of Sparrows - Avaze Gonjeshk-Ha
Majid Majidi, Iran

Another triumph from writer/director Majidi, probably the most internationally famous filmmaker working in Iran today. This one centers on a father named Karim (Mohammad Amir Naji) who as the movie opens loses his job as the foreman at an ostrich farm after one of the birds escapes on his watch. He spends a couple days searching the desert for it, in hopes of getting back into good graces with his employer, but the process is taking too long as his oldest daughter's hearing aid has broken and she needs it to be fixed or replaced before her exams begin in a few weeks. Karim gets on his motorcycle, leaves the Persian countryside and heads into Tehran. To repair or buy a new one is of course far out of his modest price range, but while on the street wondering what his next step will be he happens on a stroke of luck: a busy commuter hops on the back of his bike, assuming he is a taxi for hire, and a new employment opportunity opens up for him. He's able to earn money now, certainly more than he made herding another man's ostriches, but it keeps him from his family and from the land he loves.

The contrast of the rural with the urban highlights the difference in culture within Iran of course, but this is a warm and affecting portrait of a family with dreams and ambitions and that's where it works the best, with warm and often humorous storytelling. Majidi and cinematographer Tooraj Mansouri bring some truly beautiful images to the screen and Amir Naji, who has been in three of Majidi's previous films (Children of Heaven, The Willow Tree and Baran), is perfect as the patriarch trying to do well by his family and still remain true to himself.

GRADE: B

Can you imagine being an Ostrich farmer? I hear those things are kind of nippy. Interesting vocation to say the least. Sounds like an interesting flick, thanks for the reviews.

Revanche - Revenge
Götz Spielmann, Austria

A drama that starts out as a Ken Russell-like sordid tale of a prostitute and her boyfriend, makes a brief turn toward becoming a Jean-Pierre Melville heist flick, and then for its final hour is an absorbing meditation on anger, guilt, sacrifice and forgiveness. Unlike the recent Luc Besson-produced Taken with Liam Neeson bloodily dispatching an army of bad guys in righteous rage or even Eastwood's Gran Torino where conflict leads inevitably toward gunplay, Revanche has the set-up for a piece of genre pulp but thanks to some terrific acting and a solemn adult tone and a shifting narrative focus it miraculously becomes a satisfying character-driven piece instead of say a Chan-Wook Park gorefest.

Johannes Krisch is excellent as Alex, an ex-con working as a jack-of-all-trades at a Vienna brothel. He's also secretly dating one of the young Eastern European hookers (Irina Potapenko). When a series of events pressures them to radically move up their plans of leaving the city and the sex trade for good, Alex hatches a supposedly can't-miss plan to get some quick cash. Of course criminal schemes rarely go as planned. He winds up hiding out in the Austrian countryside with his ailing grandfather on his small farm, and through a convoluted but cinematically feasible bit of plotting becomes further and further involved with the one person in this small town he shouldn't go anywhere near.

It's surprisingly engrossing by the finale. This is the third of the five Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Language Feature I've seen in the past week (The Baader Meinhoff Complex and Waltz with Bashir being the others) and it is excellent. I think Bashir is in a class by itself and should win easily, but I wouldn't be terribly disappointed if Revanche stole it.


GRADE: A



Everlasting Moments - Die Ewigen
Augenblicke der Maria Larsson
Jan Troell, Sweden/Denmark

Period drama based on the true story of Maria Larsson, a working-class mother in turn of the 20th century Sweden who wins a camera in a small local lottery and eventually turns to photography as an escape and way to express herself that her family obligations and the prevailing societal gender roles did not allow. Maria (Maria Heiskanen) loves her ever-growing brood of children (eventually seven of them) and dutifully picks up cleaning or sewing jobs on the side to supplement her husband's salary. Her man, Sigfried (Mikael Persbrandt), is a former sailor turned sometimes dock worker, but the work isn't steady and he also has a temper - especially when he drinks. After years of not using her camera she takes it to a local portraitist (Jesper Christensen) to pawn, and he instantly likes her, insists that she keep the camera, and also sees she has a gift, an eye for photography than cannot be taught. It remains mostly a secret passion, and the few pictures she takes as well as the kind photographer represent a path not taken that she still cannot bring herself to traipse down - even with her husband's spurts of violence, infidelity and general selfishness. Her eldest daughter, Maja (played by Callin Öhrvall in the older phases), is a witness to and eventual beneficiary of her mother's difficult struggles to express her own identity.

Jesper Christensen, who has had small roles in these first two Danny Craig 007 flicks, is effortlessly appealing as the man who encourages and quietly pines for her, Öhrvall captures the change from a girl's innocence to painful knowledge quite well, and Persbrandt is fine as the intermittently charming but too often monstrous alcoholic hypocrite. But this is Maria Heiskanen's movie all the way, and she is a compelling presence on screen. I'd seen her before in Aki Kaurismäki's Lights in the Dusk and she has starred in two of Troell's previous films. Here she reminds me very much of Liv Ullmann, who starred in Jan Troell's three breakout films early in her career: The Emigrants (1971), The New Land (1972) and Zandy's Bride (1974). Everlasting Moments covers some of the same emotional and historical gender ground as those movies and probably isn't quite up to their level, but it is still an interesting portrait of a woman with competing devotions unable to follow her heart.

GRADE: C+

Cherry Blossoms - Kirschblüten
Doris Dörrie, Germany

Warmly sentimental piece about loss, regret and understanding. As it opens a sixty-something German woman named Trudi (Hannelore Elsner) is in a doctor's office getting test results back. They aren't her tests but her husband's, Rudi (Elmar Wepper), and they say he only has months - perhaps even only weeks - to live. Rather than tell him of the dire diagnosis she plans an impromptu trip from their staid small town to see two of their three adult children who live in Berlin. Rudi isn't one who is big on vacations, but he goes along anyway, not knowing this may well be the final visit. Their kids are fine, but disconnected from Mom and especially Pop. The supposed favorite son lives in Tokyo, and they've put off a trip to see him there for years. This is a quiet pain to Trudi, who has long been fascinated with Japanese culture, especially Mount Fuji and a passionate love of Butoh dance. The couple goes from Berlin to the beach on the Baltic Sea, but it is Trudi who dies in her sleep one night, not her husband (who still doesn't know his diagnosis). The wife would have managed without her husband, but no one - including Rudi - can forsee him getting along very well without her.

After the funeral he does finally make that long-postponed visit to Tokyo, and though he had been blind to his wife's true passions and feelings during much of their life together, always with the excuse that there would be time for that stuff later, in his grief he begins to understand - truly understand - the woman he shared his life with. Eventually this leads to a friendship with a nineteen-year-old girl (Aya Irizuki) living on the streets of Tokyo who dances Butoh under the cherry blossom trees in the park, and ultimately a trip to see Mount Fuji, trying to give these experiences to his departed beloved through himself.

Rudi's transformation from oblivious and emotionless to his final blossoming in the Land of the Rising Sun is an involving journey, and Wepper is completely believable at every stage, including the romantic leap he makes at the end. Elsner is such a warm presence and a character you feel for her even after she has disappeared in the second half of the movie: she is as omnipresent for us as she is for her husband. It's sentimental, to be sure, but not coying or manipulative, and the finale is well-earned. Written and directed by author turned filmmaker Doris Dörrie, this is definitely the best and most complete film I've seen from her.

GRADE: B

This sounds like a movie that I would love to see. It's funny, but when I was reading this, I thought, "Watch, she'll pass away before he does." Although I then worried that he'd find someone else, which would have been a bad place to go, in my opinion. This sounds like a wonderful movie.

__________________

Lorna's Silence - Le Silence de Lorna
Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium

The latest film from the Dardenne Brothers, it has a strong set-up but a finale that lands flatter than their best works. Arta Dobroshi stars as Lorna, a young Albanian immigrant in Belgium. She has a menial dayjob and dreams of opening a small café with her boyfriend, but she has more pressing concerns. Lorna is part of an immigration scam. She's getting paid pretty well for it, well enough to open her café, but there are some strings attached, strings that begin to strangle her sanity. The first tier of the scam is that she has married a young Belgian man, Claudy, played by Jérémie Renier who starred in the Dardenne Bros. previous flicks L'Enfant and La Promesse. But the marriage is a business arrangement: both parties are in it for the money. Once Lorna gets her Belgian citizenship she is to divorce Claudy. At that point Lorna becomes the way into the country for another immigrant, an older Russian businessman who she will marry so he can gain Belgian citizenship.

The hustler with a cover job as cab driver who is brokering these deals is a streetwise tough named Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione). As the film opens Lorna is just about to get her citizen card. But Fabio has a quicker, easier and cheaper plan than divorce: since Claudy is a junky they'll just force him an overdose of heroin and then she'll be a widowed citizen, free to marry the Russian. At first Lorna seems willing to go along with this new wrinkle to the plan, but even though theirs was a loveless paper marriage and Claudy with his addictions was not the most pleasant of flatmates these many months, she feels enough basic affection for him and has enough sanctity for life itself that she starts her own plan of faking an abusive relationship and making police reports so that she'll be granted a fast track divorce from Claudy: better he be branded a wife-beater than murdered. Of course this gets her into trouble with Fabio and the Russians, not to mention Claudy isn't keen on the idea, either.

The second half of the film becomes a little too convoluted, and though Dobroshi plays the subtle changes Lorna goes through well enough the story lacks the powerful simplicity and realism of L'Enfant and Rosetta, making the moral dilemmas too artificial and theoretical rather than the documentary-like emotional Humanism of their better films. Still lots of good in there and worth seeing, but comparing it to their own cinematic benchmarks it simply doesn't work as well.

GRADE: B-

*and my review for L'Enfant, which I first saw at the Portland International Film Festival three years ago, can be found HERE.

And this afternoon I picked up my special invitation and ticket to the Coraline screening and party that officially opens the Portland International Film Festival tomorrow night. The thing that gets you into the party at the Portland Art Museum is not a paper invitation or even a laminate but a black, three-and-a-half-inch long, diecast metal, old fashioned skeleton key, sorta like the one I pictured above here...except that the rounded end is in the shape of a button. If you've read Gaiman's book or seen the trailer, , you know how important buttons are to the story. Hope we get to keep our 3-D glasses, too.

Coolio.

Well, THAT was fun.



The official opening night of the Portland International Film Festival is usually a pretty big to-do in Oregon terms, but when you throw in a world premiere complete with stars on a red carpet it gets kee-ray-zee. Not only was it the world premiere, but it's the first feature from Laika Studios, centered here just outside of Portland and owned by Nike's Phil Knight. Phil and his son Travis, who was one of the lead animators on Coraline, were both there as were actors Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher and Robert Bailey Jr. who lent their voices to the characters, director Henry Selick, author of the book Neil Gaiman, and a few celebrities who weren't involved with the production at all such as PIXAR's Brad Bird and Portland's own Gus Van Sant and a slew of our local comic book celebrities like Craig Thompson and Dark Horse's Mike Richardson as well as over sixty of the three-hundred Laika artists and technicians who brought Coraline to life. All of this is definitely unusual for Portland, and as Phil Knight remarked before the film screened he never thought he'd ever hear people uttering the phrase, "I flew up to Portland from L.A. for the premiere".



The party afterward was held in the nearby Portland Art Museum, and some of the elaborate sets and puppets from the production were featured throughout. Quite the night for hobnobbing and it was first class all the way around. Now for the movie itself...



Coraline

A dark and visually jaw-dropping kid's movie that is probably much too scary for kids, Coraline is the story of a little girl tempted into a Through the Looking Glass world where the magic wonders mask a sinister purpose. Coraline Jones and her parents have just moved into a new house in Oregon, a spooky old place divided into three separate apartments. The other residents are a pair of sisters, Miss Spink & Miss Forcible, who were semi-famous actresses once upon a time but now devote their time to their dogs and arguing with each other, and upstairs lives Mr. Bobinsky, an eccentric former circus performer who is always busy training his mice for a comeback. It's not too long before Coraline discovers a small door in her living room that has been wallpapered over. She unlocks it and finds a portal to another world. It's a bizarro world where everything seems to be the same, her house her garden, her parents and neighbors, but everything is off. At first the ways in which this otherworld are off are wonderful, from large piles of her favorite food cooked to perfection, to a magical garden that comes to life and elaborate productions put on by her otherneighbors. But every living thing has buttons for eyes, and while there is all kinds of fun to be had there Coraline begins to realize there is a price to the magic. But will she be able to summon enough courage and use her wits to outsmart the evil force that wants to imprison her in the otherworld forever?



In an age of computer animation Coraline is a throwback: an elaborate stop-motion production, and knowing that every character - Hell every blade of grass - is a physical object makes the end product that much more amazing. It's also in 3-D. I hadn't been to any of the recent 3-D features the past couple years, but the effect in Coraline is quite amazing. From the opening credits onward the audience was audibly ooohing and aaawing. Among the voice talents Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders ("Absolutely Fabulous") as the two aged former actresses and Ian McShane ("Deadwood", Sexy Beast) as the insane Russian acrobat who live in the other two apartments of the old house really steal the show, but everybody does well including Dakota Fanning in the title role, Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman as her parents, and the deep baritone of Keith David as a helpful feline. The music by Bruno Coulais is appropriately creepy like a calliope from Hell, though it is one brief song written by They Might Be Giants sung by Coraline's otherfather that is the most fun and memorable. Technically speaking Coraline is an A++ wonderment, and that alone makes it worth seeing on the big screen, especially in a 3-D theatre. Director Henry Selick, who exploded onto the scene with The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James and the Giant Peach (1996) before falling with the annoying dud Monkeybone (2001) has made his most ambitious and beautiful picture yet. The visual feast is so lush that you could probably see this four or five times in a row and find new bits of creativity packed into the nooks and crannies of every frame. The story itself, a variation on Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz not to mention Beetlejuice, isn't quite as inventive or revolutionary as the visuals with a bit of an awkwardly unengaging introduction to the characters, and some of the darkness is surely going to be too intense for younger kiddies, but for those of us kids who never really grew up there is much to delight to.

GRADE: B+

For any impressionable young MoFos out there who haven't seen Monkeybone, do yourselves a favor and don't listen to Holden Pike because Monkeybone is, and always will be, the balls. A secret success of the highest order. Anyway, Coraline does look in-tense. I really want to read the book, too, because it's Neil ****ing Gaiman writing a children's book and I just love the heck out of that idea.

Il Divo: The Extraordinary Life of Giulio Andreotti
Paolo Sorrentino, Italy

Stylized biopic of Italian politician Giulio Andreotti, who served as the Prime Minister three different stints in the 1970s, '80s and '90s as well as holding various other lower positions in the government. He also had ties to the Mafia, including involvement with the abduction of another Prime Minister, Aldo Moro, and the Tangentopoli, an enormous bribery scandal that named dozens of politicians in a web of corruption and collusion. Toni Servillo stars as Andreotti, and it is an oddball but magnetic performance. He plays him as startlingly stiff and most often completely still in physicality, and he is a man of few words, softspoken ones at that. But he is a shark and will sanction just about anything if it furthers his political goals. As he explains at one point, he is essentially using evil in the cause of a greater good. At least that's his main rationalization.

This period of Italian political history is not one I really knew anything about going in, and other than it was clearly a cesspool where violence and venality ruled I still don't think I learned anything. That is, I suppose, the film's primary strength and its weakness. It is most definitely not a staid, boring, self-important biopic in any way. In terms of style director Paolo Sorrentino seemed to be channeling Martin Scorsese throughout, with showy camera moves, dark comedy and often humorously incongruous pop music on the soundtrack, kind of Coppola's The Godfather Part III meets Stones Nixon by way of Scorsese's Casino. In that sense it is sometimes refreshing and often vibrant, depending on the scene. But where it fails is in shedding any kind of light or understanding on Andreotti and certainly not on any of the other various politicians, clergy and Mafioso, either historically or as cinematic characters. There are so many of them and the narrative jumps around just enough that it is very difficult to keep track of who is who among the various political rivals and thugs, much less feel anything about them or their fates. I wanted a key I could continually reference like a Tolstoy epic, of who is who and how are they connected to each other, but it moves too quickly for that and never really distinguishes the supporting players from one another. Ultimately this all leads to a hollow experience by the time the credits role. Sporadically entertaining, especially Servillo's work, but a mess.

GRADE: C+

The Window - La Ventana
Carlos Sorin, Argentina

An eighty-five-year-old writer, Don Antonio (Antonio Larreta), is recovering from a recent heart attack at his estate in the hills of Patagonia. As he awaits a visit from his estranged prodigal son, an internationally famous concert pianist, Antonio tries to assert as much independence as he can, despite his household help and the doctor trying to keep him bedridden to hopefully speed his recovery. Energized by the rememberance of a childhood memory unburied from deep in his subconscious, Antonio manages to get out of bed and take one last walk in the fields. The Window is a subtle, simple and affecting portrait of a man's last day alive, recognizing the things he finds most important and lasting from his time on earth, a Humanistic cinematic poem on existence and acceptance.

GRADE: B-



The Chaser - 추격자
Na Hong-Jin, South Korea

Intense and incredibly bloody serial killer thriller flick, despite some tonal shifts throughout and some reliance on genre clichés The Chaser does indeed deliver suspense, and with a pessimistic ending the likes of which are not usually allowed in movies from the West, certainly not in Hollywood. Kim Yoon-Seok stars as Joong-Ho, a former Policeman turned pimp in the seediest parts of Seoul. A couple of his girls have gone missing in recent weeks, he assumes they have simply run away. After another one of his girls, Min-Jee (Seo Yeong-Hee), is sent on a call he realizes it's the same customer who last saw the two missing hookers. He now assumes that this person must have re-sold his merchandise to somebody else and he takes off into the city to find them. The truth is much more sinister: the john (Ha Jeong-Woo) is a psychotic serial killer, and Min-Jee is about to become his next victim.

What follows is both of the suspense genre but also plays against the well-known conventions. For example, rather than the movie becoming a drawn-out 'will the killer be discovered in time?' plot familiar in everything from Kurosawa's Stray Dog (1949) to Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991) and a few hundred lesser movies and dozens of TV cop and detective shows in between and beyond, the killer is accidentally caught and even confesses to the crimes very early on. But there are still many twists and thrills to come, as well as lots and lots of blood. Kind of Chinatown meets SE7EN by way of Chan-Wook Park, it is over-the-top but in an effective way. Not for the feint of heart though still short of the "torture porn" of Hostel and the like, as a sucker for hardboiled Noirs of all eras I have to admit I enjoyed this grim, depraved, outrageous ride.

GRADE: B