JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY I wasn't expecting much from this Danish film, but it's turned out to be the best surprise thus far of the festival. It's a thriller / mystery that uses similar story elements as some popular American films, but throws in some graphic material and wonderful imagery to put it in a league of its own. The story is about a crime scene photographer who gets involved in a devastating highway car accident leaving one man dead, and a woman badly injured and potentially blind. He feels partly responsible, and decides to see the woman in the hospital to clear his conscience. However, since family members and friends of the girl are the only ones allowed in to see her he claims to be her boyfriend to get access into the room, and before he knows what hits him he's taken in by the girl's family and can't bring himself to tell everyone the truth. As he gets more involved with the girl (who doesn't remember much before the accident) his feelings for her start to unravel both his marriage, and a history that the girl doesn't recall she was trying to escape from. This is a cleverly conceived mystery that gets more and more interesting as things begin to reveal themselves. It's solidly acted, and steadily directed with numerous exceptional moments that range from impressively destructive (the car wreck), to joyful (a well choregraphed sequence mixing a piece of classical music with the release of the girl from the hospital), to chilling. I have no doubt that this will be one of the strongest films I'm likely to see at the festival TOKYO! A trio of short films from non-Japanese directors (Michel Gondry, Bong Joon Ho, and Leos Carax) all centering around the great city of Tokyo. Gondry's film follows the struggles of a young couple trying to make a living, with the young man being an aspiring experimental filmmaker and the girl trying to find what interests her to define who she is and pursue whatever that may be as a means to make a living. She is seemingly ambitionless, and he makes terrible films. All the while the two of them are desperate to locate an apartment that's minus dead cats and termites so that they can stop being a drag to an old friend of theirs that is sharing her made for one loft with them until they find a place of their own. Initially this film is little more than the typical coming of age type of film about two people trying to make a living doing what they love to do. In the final third of the film it progresses into something that is completely unexpected and leaves the film on a much higher note than how it began. The second installment is from Leos Carax and is definitely the most energetic and enjoyable of the 3 shorts, but vice versa with Gondry's film I think it gets less interesting once it reaches the final third. Carax's short focuses on a strange anomaly of a man that looks like a cross between a full grown leprachaun and a fast walking zombie as he emerges randomly from the sewer system to cause havoc on the streets of Tokyo. He walks briskly from sewer to sewer and licks, topples, and steals from the patrons on his way. While in the sewer he uncovers what appears to be some buried military equipment back from World War II, and he uses it to highten the damage he normally causes in the streets. During the second and third sections of Carax's story the film starts to shift a little towards social commentary and media fascination, and at that point the interest I had invested in what the hell kind of character I was watching started to trickle away. However, despite that this was my favorite of the 3 shorts. THE HOST director Bong Joon Ho's film is the most consistently interesting of the films, but the end payoff is fairly anti-climactic especially since it's the film they use to close the deal. His story is about a hermit-like man that has shielded himself from society completely for the past 10 years. He has had no physical nor eye contact with any person during that time, and has not stepped one foot out of his front door step. All of this changes instantly when his routine weekly pizza order arrives at his front door and he notices that the deliverer is wearing a garder, which is the start of a series of out of the ordinary events that invoke a desire for him to break out of his shell. However, after 10 years the outside world may not be exactly what he recalls. Again, this film is probably the one that kept my interest for the majority of its duration, but it ends somewhat abruptly that may not have bothered me so much if it didn't turn out to be the ending to TOKYO! itself. Overall this was a good film, and each short looks as good stylistically as one would expect of these three directors for each of their segments. It isn't entertaining all throughout, but it's never dull and the good parts are indeed very, very good parts. SURVEILLENCE A wonderful crime / mystery that completely falls apart with 20 minutes left. Right up until the final act the story was engaging, the actors were entertaining, and the film had me guessing where it might go. Then, the little voice in the back of my head started to run its mouth and I couldn't help but hear it tell me exactly what was going to happen. I sat in my seat arguing with myself that the first two-thirds were too good for it to do the one thing it could do to make it go bad. To my dismay my little voice turned out to be right. SURVEILLENCE takes a Rashomon-ish approach to telling the story about 3 eyewitnesses to a brutal car wreck that occurred on the side of the road on the outskirts of a small town. Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond play two FBI agents brought in to help solve the mystery as the 3 eyewitnesses (a little girl, a druggie, and an angry police officer) each tell their story of what happened on the side of the road, and how it all may connect with another murder that takes place at the beginning of the film. Up through the first hour the film is remarkably solid. Some of the acting is noticeably odd, but it actually added a little bit of quirk to a film that could have been run of the mill. The story unfolds in a well paced fashion, and as we start to get closer to the scene everyone is being questioned about I was hooked on what might happen next. Then, as I said before, the thinkable happens and everything falls apart after that. This isn't necessarily a film I wouldn't completely not recommend someone see because a good deal of the film is worth seeing, and for people that don't watch a lot of movies they will be unsuspecting and will be surprised by where the film goes in the final act. However, to anyone else planning on seeing this film the best advice I can give is to attempt to blank your mind while you're watching it, and do your best to make sure a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man type of film memory doesn't creep in there to tell you what happens. YOUR NAME HERE Rarely have I seen a movie that is so off the wall and so well acted mixed with a production that seems completely amateur. This is the story of William J. Frick, the premiere science-fiction writer during the 70s in a mental tailspin to find the ending to his lifelong masterpiece. The film starts with Frick being verbally assaulted by an ex-wife (or some other type of intimate relationship on the rocks) looking for payment, while also being pursued by an IRS rep out to tell him both how honored he is to meet him and to let him know that he owes over 100 grand in taxes. Trying to cope with his dilemma he takes a hit of some hard drugs and goes into a dreamful coma where he is putting himself into certain scenarios that he has written about in past stories involving government conspiracy, robot spies, religion, Hollywood, and other things that Richard Kelly used for SOUTHLAND TALES. First and foremost, this is Bill Pullman's best performance. Always being subjected to mostly bland characters in big Hollywood productions, or side characters in more interesting films we've never been privy to the full on capabilities of Bill Pullman. Even his most interesting film (LOST HIGHWAY) didn't really display the things that Bill Pullman could possibly do. Finally, Pullman has a performance that he can point to and tell people, "see, I can do really good shit." Secondly, if not for the countless recognizable faces I'd guess this film cost about $5,000 to make, and I don't mean that in a way to congratulate it on making something really good with very little. I mean that in a way to insinuate that despite the possibilities of what a film about the inner mind of a superior science-fiction writer could be like, and with good actors doing good acting in it, the film is hindered by what was either a lack of money, or imagination with the filmmaking. It could have been an artistic decision to film the movie in a very unassuming style, but for this particular movie it doesn't work. The actors were done a disservice by putting in reasonable effort into something that could have been remarkable if only given either more money for some nicer sets, or more experience behind the camera. Either way the film could have been a lot more, but as is it's moderately entertaining mind trip with a very good performance from Bill Pullman. Also, this is based fictitiously on Philip K. Dick, so it may resonate a little more with people that are familiar with Dick's life outside of his narratives. REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA I'm not between 12 and 21. I'm not a female. I don't shop at Hot Topic. I have seen really good musicals. I have seen really good horror films. I have heard really good rock 'n roll. REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA was not created for me. Plain and simple, I did not like this movie. That being said, I saw it with a crowd where I appeared to be the outcast. Everyone else in the audience seemed to know the songs going in to the show, and had a blast watching the flick. However, the majority of that crowd seemed to fall demographically with points 1, 2, and 3 from the first paragraph. It definitely wasn't the worst thing I'd seen, and I wasn't tempted to just get up and walk out, but I certainly was not having a good time. I don't know though, considering the enthusiasm everyone from the audience had (and it may have just been the filmmakers trying to get everyone into it, which worked) the joke may be on me. However, I can't imagine anyone really happy to have seen this movie if they'd seen a good movie before ever in their life. Thanks, The Beef
