Saturday Night at the Movies
SIFF 2017: Wrap party!
By Dennis Hartley
The Seattle International Film Festival is now entering its final week. With 400 films showing over 25 days, I’ve been getting to as many as possible, but I believe I’ve now bagged my limit! Hopefully, some of these will be coming soon to a theater near you…
Boundaries– Have you ever heard of the tiny island-nation of Besco, which is located “50 km off the coast of Labrador”? Me neither. I sheepishly asked Mr. Google, and found out that it is from the mind of writer-director Chloe Robichaud (next thing you’ll tell me is that movies are totally make-believe). I admit, she really had me going for 98 minutes (oh, those Quebecois film makers!). The film is a feminist parable about an emergency summit called for by the newly-elected female president of “Besco” to negotiate possible foreign investment in the island’s iron ore. At its best, it reminded me of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero; at its weakest, it’s uneven and ultimately too “inside” for anyone unfamiliar with Canadian politics. So, I am going to go with a guarded recommendation on this one.
Rating: **½ (Plays June 4)
Ears – This entry from Italian writer-director Alessandro Aronadio is a deadpan dramedy in the Jim Jarmusch vein. Filmed in stark B&W, it follows the travails of a sad sack protagonist who awakens in his girlfriend’s apartment to a ringing in his ears and a cryptic, scribbled note on the fridge. This kick-starts an increasingly bizarre and surreal day in the life. At times, it recalls Richard Linklater’s Waking Life, but unfortunately, it’s not as compelling. A few good chuckles here and there…but this film goes nowhere, fast.
Rating: ** (Plays June 4 & June 6)
God of War – Hong Kong action maestro Gordon Chan’s war epic stars Sammo Hung as a general with an under-trained “people’s army” desperately trying to get the upper hand on a sizable coterie of seasoned Japanese pirates who have been wreaking havoc up and down the coast. Chan has his Japanese cast members speak in-language; it’s unique for a Chinese film, and enhances the verisimilitude. Sections of the storyline get murky and confusing, but colorful, rousing (and frequent) battle scenes make up for occasional lulls.
Rating: *** (SIFF’s North American Premiere was May 26; now in theaters)
Infinity Baby – Merely posing as a “near-future” dystopia tale, Austin-based director Bob Byington’s film is really an examination of modern romance. In other words, it’s only “sci-fi” in the sense that Woody Allen’s Sleeper was “sci-fi” (if you catch my drift). A douchey hipster (Kieran Culkin) with a fear of commitment works for a company that holds a patent on a genetic modification that creates “infinity babies”…human infants forever frozen at 3 months old who never cry and require only weekly feedings and diaper changes (which makes it a fantasy for a lot of first-time parents, I’m guessing?). Onur Tukel’s fitful screenplay works best whenever it steers away from the sci-fi elements and focuses instead on wry observation and passive-aggressive verbal jousting.
Rating: **½ (Plays June 4)
Revolting Rhymes – Based on Roald Dahl’s imaginatively reinvented mashups of classic fairy tales, this film combines two 35-minute BBC 1 shorts into a feature-length. German co-directors Jakob Schuh and Jan Lachauer obviously had a good time making this animated network narrative that cleverly cross-pollinates Little Red Riding Hood with Snow White and Cinderella with Jack and the Beanstalk. None other than the Big Bad Wolf is on hand to play the Cryptkeeper who ties the threads together. Great voice work by Dominic West, Rob Brydon, Gemma Chan, and others. BTW, it is not for young kids!
Rating: *** (Plays June 10)
This is Our Land – This French film might be a little too close for comfort…while ostensibly based on the rise of far-right populist candidate Marine Le Pen, it could just as well be the cautionary tale America desperately needed about, oh, two years ago. Emilie Dequenne is quite good as a single-mom homecare nurse with no previous political experience who gets sweet-talked by a local right-wing power-broker into running for mayor on a populist ticket. Her campaign is compromised once she becomes romantically re-involved with her old high-school boyfriend, who claims to have put his dubious past involving a xenophobic extremist group behind him. Belgian director Lucas Belvaux’s film (reminiscent of Michael Ritchie’s The Candidate) is a sobering reminder that that old axiom about “the road to hell” being “paved with good intentions” is truer than ever.
Rating: *** (Plays June 6 & June 11)
Zoology – This oddity from Russian writer-director Ivan Tverdosky answers the question: What would happen if David Cronenberg directed a film with a script by Lena Dunham? A middle-aged, socially phobic woman who lives with her mother and works in a zoo administration office, appears to be at her happiest when she’s hanging out with the animals who are housed there. That’s because her supervisor and co-workers cruelly belittle her, on a daily basis. But when a doctor’s exam reveals a tail growing from the base of her spine, she is overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of empowerment and begins to gain confidence, perhaps even a sense of defiance about her “otherness”. This does not go unnoticed by a strapping young x-ray tech, who becomes hopelessly smitten as this ugly duckling turns into a beautiful swan…a beautiful swan with a freakishly long tensile tail.
Rating: ** (Plays June 6 & June 10)
Check out my full SIFF coverage at Den of Cinema
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–Dennis Hartley