Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

TheNorthlander deserves a lot of credit... he was the first one to call it on LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. He’s been talking about that movie for what seems like at least a year now, way before anyone else was, and he was right.

As a result, I’m really pleased to have him at the Stockholm Film Festival, weighing in on everything he’s going to be seeing over the next ten days. He started with a big batch of press screenings, and let’s see what he checked out:

Hey guys, The Northlander here with my first rapport from the 19th annual Stockholm International Film Festival.

There are usually some really great movies showing here, this year not as many as last year perhaps but then last year there were so many great movies coming out it's just hard to top that. I mean, THERE WILL BE BLOOD, INTO THE WILD, REC, THE DARJEELING LIMITED etc etc. How can you beat that?

There's a lot to cover here, I won't get to see them all but I'll try to squeeze in as many as possible - at least the Must-Sees, as many of the Sounds-funs as possible, and a few of the Eh-I-Don't-Really-Have-Tos just for the hell of it.

I've already seen three of the films on my Must-See list - THE WRESTLER, TRANSIBIRIAN and W.

I will also do my absolute best to get tickets to THE ARGENTINE, JCVD, CHOCOLATE, THE MARTYRS, EMBODIMENT OF EVIL and AUSTRALIA later on and a whole bunch of others as well.

If you want the entire list of films, check out the website.

And if there's anything you feel I really gotta see that maybe I don't know about give me a shout in the talkbalks below, I'll be checking them. The festival is between November 20th and November 30th.

So, here's what I've seen so far:

THE CLASS (ENTRE LES MURS)
France
Directed by Laurent Cantet

The first film I saw was actually one of those I hadn't planned on seeing, but due to some changes in the press screening schedule and me being there early the first day because nobody had sent me any press release info yet, I ended up seeing the French film THE CLASS, winner of the Golden Palm (the award that is, not to be confused with the infamous deadly Shaolin Ninja Golden Palm Technique) at Cannes this year.

I went into this film knowing next to nothing, except that it's about about a teacher, in one of the tougher areas of Paris. It's based on an autobiographical book written by François Bégaudeau, who also wrote the screenplay for this and plays himself in the lead role. You can tell it's a personal story to him, and Laurent Cantet gets a pretty good performance out of him, especially since he doesn't have any acting background as far as I know.

You know movies like STAND AND DELIVER, DANGEROUS MINDS, FREEDOM WRITERS, and 187? Movies about a teacher in a bad school, in a bad neighbourhood who tries to save the students, salvage their futures and give them hope that maybe they can actually make something out of themselves? Well, imagine that but without that heightened Hollywood style. No Coolio, no Edward James Olmos, no Michelle Pfeiffer, Hillary Swank or Samuel L. Jackson. Oh yeah, and imagine it if the students actually DIDN'T want to learn anything. I mean, usually Olmos & co has to fight against the kids not believing that they can - this guy has to fight against the kids not wanting to, which is harder when you think about it.

Two hours and 8 minutes later, I have every sympathy for the guy. Teaching 14-year-olds must be one of the toughest, most ungrateful jobs one can have. After seeing this film, I can tell you that I will Never. Ever. EVER. Be a 9th grade teacher. No fucking way. I mean, I deal with these kinds of kids in my day job from time to time (I work at a multiplex) so I know how hard it can be. But being stuck with them day in and day out for three years... DAMN.

You gotta have the Eye of the Tiger for that.

THE CLASS is shot in a very documentary-like style, but without ever claiming to actually be a documentary - There are lots of 100% genuinely naturalistic performances by real kids here (as opposed to too old, Hollywood trained, actors). Lots of hand held camera work, it's a very naturalistic approach and that certainly adds to the anxiety factor when François tries to deal with these overgrown children who have no interest in learning anything and can't see beyond today. They still test borders to see what they can get away with, but they're smart enough to be able to get away with anything they want.

THAT'S really what makes them dangerous; their Intelligence. They're like Velocioraptors.

Apart from François, we also get to follow some of the students, again like we usually do in 'teacher films'. Most prominent are Wei, the Chinese immigrant 'good' student who's mother is deported during the course of the film - a storyline that is probably a comment on France's foreign policy more than anything - and Soulyman, the 'bad' student who just refuses to co-operate on every level. His mother doesn't read French, so the log book that François sends him home with, that has all the information listed about how he disrupts the class, never does his homework, how he's about to be expelled even... his mom never finds this stuff out. His brother signs it, but he doesn't do anything to make Soulyman take his responsibility. His father is mentioned in the film but never appears, but they say that he will send Soulyman home and away from France if he's expelled.
Now, THE CLASS is a good film, but definetly not a film without flaws. At 128 minutes - and most of it IS just talking heads, it could really be trimmed down a bit. We don't need to see everything here, at least 20 minutes less would have been better. Also, a lot of important plot is just abandoned mid-story, like we never find out what happens to Wei's mother or to him, like if he'll have to leave too, which is something that is discussed but never made clear. Soulyman as a character plays a large part, and we're right there at the end when it's decided if he'll be expelled or not, and while we find that out, there still is no real closure to that story either.

I mean, Yeah it's François' movie and all, and not his student's. But still. Leaving these storylines with open endings doesn't help them and it sort of hampers the film. I don't know if the kids' stories are based on real events and they try to protect them or what, but It would have been better if they hadn't been left open like that.

If you want to see a good, solid teacher film, check this one out. It should be mandatory viewing in schools, for the bad students at least. It's better they see something like this than HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL... It's a strong drama with some fun dry, well timed comic relief. The scene with the teachers in a meeting, and one of them complaining about the raised price of coffee from the machine from 40 cents to 50 is one of my favorites. Or another one where a teacher announces that she's pregnant. Those scenes even felt a bit like something from THE OFFICE (The original version. I wouldn't know about the other one). With students like that, these people have to drink A LOT of coffee...

MERMAID (RUSALKA)
Russia
Directed by Anna Melikyan

This is another one I knew very little about, but unlike THE CLASS it was one I had intended to see at the festival. I kind of liked the setup, it seemed to have a sort of heightened sense of reality to it, and being into that sort of fantasy I marked this on my list just for that.

I can't remember the last time I saw a Russian movie either, if ever.
I'm gonna say this right away, if AMELIE FROM MONTEMARTRE is your type of stuff you should definetly check out MERMAID. It's about a special little girl called Alisa who grows up in a shed on the beach in Russia with her mom and her grandma. She discovers she can wish things into happening and all she wants is to become a ballerina when she grows up. After she sets the house on fire, the family move to Moscow because when people have no where else to go, they go to Moscow (or so we find out). At 18, things take a turn for the worse, and she's got a bad job walking around dressed up as a walking cell phone, sort of an advertisement gig. She owes her boss money and life genrally stinks, and as she's about to jump off a bridge, she's interrupted by a guy who crosses the road, drunk and through the heavy traffic, and jumps before she has a chance to do it herself.

She decides to save his life instead of taking her own.

That's sort of the setup.

Alisa is wonderfully portrayed by first Anastasiya Dontsova as a 6-year-old, then by Mariya Shalayeva when she's 10 years older. As we follow her through her life, we also have this great voice over track that adds to the atmosphere of the story.

MERMAID owes a lot to movies like AMELIE, but there are also moments of Luc Besson in there. Character moments, mostly. Alisa's grandmother somehow reminded me of Uncle Louis from THE BIG BLUE at times. I don't know if it's intended or if it's me just making a connection based on similar style though, but I think if you like Besson and movies like AMELIE you're gonna love MERMAID.

I enjoyed the hell out of it anyway.

THE WRESTLER
USA
Directed by Darren Aronofsky

This has to be the best movie of the festival. The best I've seen so far at least.

For some reason I haven't been a huge Aronofsky fan before. I mean, I really liked both REQUIEM FOR A DREAM and THE FOUNTAIN, but I don't own either on DVD. I would probably have bought either one of them if I had come across them in where I usually buy DVDs (I'm one of those people who prefers scanning used DVD shops for gems and good deals, just because it's more fun that way), but I haven't gone out of my way to get those movies by ordering them.

Now I'm gonna have to figure out which release of THE FOUNTAIN to buy, and that's just for starters.

I'm becoming an Aronofsky fan.

You should all know the plot by now - Mickey Rourke plays fading pro wrestling star Randy 'The Ram' Robinson. It's not that he's old and broken so much that his life is. He's living in a trailer, with problems paying for that, his daughter doesn't want anything to do with him after years of neglect, and he's courting a stripper during her business hours... You get the point.

I'm trying really hard to find things about this movie I didn't like. The casting here is obviously really great, and Rourke deserves all the props he's been getting for his performance here, definetly, but I gotta also say that gorgeous Marisa Tomei as the stripper is just GREAT casting. She shifts from beautiful, sweet, genuine, and hot as hell from one moment to the next and you totally buy everything. It's those little things, like her interaction with Rourke early on where he's obviously a regular customer of hers who fantasizes about more, and while that is sort of in her job description she also has to fend guys like him off when they get too close - it just work so great and that's got a lot to do with both of them as actors. The little things, like the faces they make as a reaction to what the other is doing or saying... it's just great acting. From both of them.

Also, there's a scene with Randy wrestling in a Hardcore Wrestling match that's down right nasty in the way it's shot. I don't want to give away too much of that, but I'll say this: Darren Aronofsky can REALLY shoot violence. That Hardcore Wrestling in this movie now has me psyched for his ROBOCOP. One of the best things about Veerhoven's original movie was the sheer brutality of it. Those 14 seconds of Mr Kinney being minigunned by ED-209, Murphy getting shot to shreds, the melting guy - Aronofsky definetly has it in him to shoot things like that and if he decides to go there, I for one can't wait.

TRANSSIBIRIAN
USA
Directed by Brad Anderson

This is one of those I had high on my must see list this festival. Not because I like THE MACHINIST, Brad Anderson's last film, because I didn't, really. I've seen THE MACHINIST twice, the second time just to make sure I didn't miss whatever it was that people love about that film, but still, no. I don't like it. Still feel it's a half-assed attempt at cashing in on FIGHT CLUB and MEMENTO, but then I'm a big fan of both Palahniuk and Nolan not to mention Fincher going way back and so maybe that's why.

Still, I've always felt Anderson does have potential to be a really good filmmaker, there are well crafted parts in THE MACHINIST even if I didn't like it overall, and I'm interrested in seeing what he cooks up.

TRANSSIBIRIAN is about an American couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) that has been working for a church in Beijing helping children, and they have decided to take the long way home via the Trans-sibirian railroad, mostly because Woody wants to put some excitement in an otherwise stale marriage by trying to impress his wife with how adventurous he can be. They meet another young couple, latino bad boy Carlos and emo girl Abby who tell them they've been working as English teachers in Japan and are on the way somewhere else. After a while things take a turn for the worse as you start to expect these people are not who they claim to be.

I have to give kudos to Anderson for the first hour of this film, it starts out as what could genuinely be an interesting drama and stays that way a really long time, making sure both the audience and the characters feel safe in what is going on behind the surface. There are twists, and turns, and you don't really know what's going on, and like in THE MACHINIST, Anderson shows that he both enjoys and is able to, play with the viewer in a way that M Night Shyamalan only wishes he could. Or thinks. I dunno.

The performances overall here are good, Harrelson brings out and dusts off his old likeble CHEERS Woody, which is nice for a change, and Ben Kingsley pulls off a pretty interesting turn as Russia's answer to Colombo.

Unfortunately, after the really well crafted first hour, the second half of this thing is the real letdown. In the set up, the first time we meet Woody and his wife back in Beijing, the beliefs of his church are firmly planted - that they see things in a very black and white way, and presumably the point of this film is to show them how things aren't really like that. The way the story unfolds, that's the only way I can interpret it. The problem is however, Woody's character isn't really one that sees things in black and white as far as I could tell, and neither is his wife. He may be nice to the point of naiveté, but he does not give the impression of having that black/white, right/wrong, good/evil view of the world. His wife, who used to be more of the wild one before they met and has calmed down a lot since, certainly doesn't have that world view either. It could be that the scene in the opening is a leftover from an earlier draft where the main characters were a bit different, I suppose. But that's speculation.

Another problem I had with this film is that it feels really xenophobic at times. It's not just that it's about a righteous young American couple out of their element and in jeopardy either. It's almost as if one of the points Anderson is trying to make in a lot of places in this story is that If You Travel Abroad, Bad Things Will Happen To You. Cops in russia will detain you for a month and cut of your toes if you don't pay them thousands of dollars in bribes.

They'll kidnap you and Hostel torture you. You can't trust people you meet on the road. They're coming for you, Barbara. You know?

These are the themes that are actually explored here in the story, not how the world is grey as opposed to black and white.

I mean, the one storyline that actually seems to go for that is Woody's wife's, but since he's really the goody-two-shoes of the couple and she's just a 'bad girl' who only tries to behave because she's married to him - when she breaks down and 'turns' (in lack of a better word) she doesn't really change all that much, does she? And Woody never blames her either, he never throws the bible at her or anything, so that point is kind of moot when you think about it.
In closing, TRANSIBIRIAN is a film I liked much better than THE MACHINIST, and a lot of that is because it's not trying so damn hard to be 'cool'. The first half is really well written and directed, the second... could have used a few more re-writes and a better ending.

JOHNNY MAD DOG
France
Directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire

Another movie I had absolutely no idea about what I was watching before it started, except that it had something to do with child soldiers.

A lot of times it's more interesting knowing as little as possible going in I think, and it also helps determine the quality of the work, or at least if you can say to yourself "I didn't like it personally, but it's still a good movie".

JOHNNY MAD DOG is a film about a child soldier in an unnamed African country. It starts out rough and violent with a band of boy soldiers invading a small village, robbing from the people and even stealing their young. There's a scene here, where they find a small boy with a pink shirt in the village that his father has hidden. They put a rifle in the boy's hands, points it at his father and shout at him that if he doesn't shoot his father in the head, they will kill him and they all had to do that themselves. His father is begging for his life and for them not to do that to his kid until they get the kid to pull the trigger.

That's how JOHNNY MAD DOG starts.

The character of MAD DOG is the leader for this group, and he answers to the one of the generals in the rebellion who sends them on different missions during the course of this film. The rag tag group of children he leads look like something straight out of MAD MAX in their getups - no real uniforms, just stuff they find on the way that they steal from people, like one of them is walking around wearing someone's wedding dress, complete with bride's veil and everything.
All they know is that they're fighting this war, and is bringing down the president. They don't know anything else, and between killing, raiding, raping, taking drugs, that's all they need. Apart from the ending, that's pretty much what happens in this film. It's a violent portrait of the lives of some child soldiers. Imagine KIDS, but less fucking and more killing.

The acting here I have to say is top notch. Johnny Mad Dog and his team are SCARY. So is the directing, editing etc. The only problem I have is with the writing, the story could have used more progression - as it is it could just as easily have been a 30 minute film with this story. We don't need an hour and a half to see how violent these children are, even if it IS shocking and horrific. There's also a short storyline about a young girl, and I'm guessing it's been put there to contrast the soldier life of Mad Dog, but it's too short and comes in too late in the game.

But other than that, it's a good enough watch.

HENRY POOLE IS HERE
USA
Directed by Mark Pellington

The first time I heard about this was a few months ago when someone came in at work and wondered when it was due for release. He didn't know the title of it, and I hadn't heard about it at all for some reason. So a while back, when browsing through the festival catalogue to decide what to see and what not, I came upon it and decided to put it on the to-see list. Good thing too.

I liked this one. In the end, that's sort of how I feel about it. There were things in this story I had problems with, but I'll get to that later.

It feels kinda like the little brother of DONNIE DARKO in a lot of ways. It doesn't have the humor or nostalgia of DONNIE, but it explores a lot of the same themes in a visually similar way. You even have Beth Grant appearing in a few scenes, even though it's a background role.

Luke Wilson plays the title character here, Henry poole, a man seemingly bereft of his will to live who buys a house in a Los Angeles suburb. Henry keeps a lot to himself, and when the nosy next door neighbour finds a water stain on his house that she claims is the face of Jesus, well it's an annoyance to say the least. Then, when she starts bringing people there to worship his water stain, and tries to convert him from atheism, it really becomes an issue.

HENRY POOLE IS HERE is a film, like DONNIE DARKO, that explores faith as a concept, atheism vs agnosticism vs religion. These are hard types of stories to write it seems, because they're so often colored by the filmmaker's own beliefs and it's easy to forget you're not always preaching to the converted - it's still a story you're telling and you have to act within the paremeters of that. SIGNS and CONTACT are two other films that try to explore these subjects, and they never worked for me because they both fall into that trap; You can't make a film about a person who finds God (or proof that he exists), and then claim it's a film about a person who finds Faith. You can't have both proof of the existance of God while at the same time have faith that he exists. See what I mean? Proof is for knowing, not believing. Faith is for believing, not knowing. That's where a lot of these type of films fail.

DONNIE DARKO always worked for me anyway, for a lot of reasons. One of them being that it's about him deciding to believe and that will help him make a very tough decision in the end, so it actually leads up to something. SIGNS and CONTACT never worked for me because of the on-the-nose preachyness of them and as films, unlike DONNIE DARKO, they're really not even that entertaining. It's just finding religion for the sake of finding it almost. HENRY POOLE IS HERE does have some of what didn't work in SIGNS and CONTACT, I don't want to give away the ending, but it does have some of that. At the same time though, like DONNIE DARKO, it's got a great soundtrack and atmosphere to it, with some memorable moments and characters. The only thing it lacks is some self distance ("What's a fuckass?").

Another thing worth noting is, while it does make the argument for the atheist - there's one scene in particular where he completely tells his nosy neighbour off and explains exactly why atheists don't like religious nuts trying to 'save' them. Being an atheist myself, I LOVED that scene. In just a few sentences and an inspired acting moment the film REALLY delivers a point. BUT, that said, when the film ends it does kind of... fall on its ass if you will because the point of this story completely contradicts that particular scene. Or else, maybe that scene is meant as a thematic argument for someone who hasn't yet 'been saved', in which case I'm not sure what the hell to make of this film or that scene except that it was fun while it lasted.

In any case, whatever I personally believe, I can't really help but like this movie. But if it had been more ambiguous I think it would have been better for everybody. It's clearly inspired by DONNIE DARKO, but what makes that movie what it is, is the fact that it asks you more questions than it answers.

W.
USA
Directed by Oliver Stone

Another one I had looked forward to for a while. I realize this has been out for a while now in the states, but not everywhere else. For instance, it opens here in December.

So I'll make this brief.

After the Obama victory, and now that the whole Bushmare is over, it's easy to wonder just who the hell this movie is made for anyway.
I'll get to that in a second, but first let me just say I'm glad as hell Oliver Stone got to make Dubya's biopic before anyone else had the chance to. Not because of his political convictions mind you, or my own for that matter, but because let's face it - biopics in general and president biopics in particular is something he's made half a career out of.

We follow two storylines here. One with George W Bush in office after becoming president, and the other with him as a young man, with all his problems coping with school and holding down a job. I get the feeling that while Stone might not be sympathetic to the Bush administration's politics, he's got a lot of sympathy for the man himself and wants to show people who he is and why he's like the way he is. I'm not sure if W has seen this film, but if he has, I don't think it's completely out of the question that he might enjoy it. So in other words, it's not a bunch of cheap shots glued together to form a plot.

The performances here range from spot on to brilliant to not really that good at all, and both the strenghts and weaknesses lie in the casting here. Josh Brolin as W and Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney are inspired casting. Thandie Newton as Condoleesa Rice and James Cromwell as Bush sr are great too. Seeing that guy from the Fantastic Four movies, Ioan Gruffudd, try to play Tony Blair on the other hand didn't work for me at all. Really. Okay, in a few angles, when he's frowning, he's kind of got that Blair frowny look to him, but his accent feels WAAY off and distracting, he's about 20 years too young, and he doesn't pull off that Trademark grin either that Tony Blair stole from Tim Curry. In fact, when I think about it, why didn't they just get Tim Curry to play Blair? Oh well.

I think, in a few years, when the memory of Bush's presidency has faded a bit and we all got some distance from that, this movie will find a place.

It's good, absolutely, but right now maybe a bit ahead of its time.
That concludes the first batch. I'll be back with more in a few days.

/TheNorthlander