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Sundance 2009: Father Death on LOUISE-MICHEL, LET'S MAKE MONEY, THE MAID, WHERE IS WHERE? and RUDO Y CURSI... not the best day.
Hey folks, Harry here... I met Father Death briefly in 1998, when I was a guest at the Sundance Film Festival. And we've had reports from him at each of the festivals there that he has attended. You should know though that it seems he didn't find anything of worth for his attention this first weekend of SUNDANCE. I'd love to hear from as many of you as possible that are attending SUNDANCE as there are surely some jewels to be found... right?
Hey,
I'm back. I'm an old Sundance vet, though not as grizzly as the middle-aged ones.
I've been to Sundance FF in 1998, 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2008. This year is my last one because I'm serious about college and will settle happily in the East.
There's not much to rave about in terms of good films. I thought about sending in reviews of about three more films that left me disappointed last year but skipped. Here I am, belatedly.
Ok, here is a rundown of the five films I saw on Saturday the 17th and Sunday the 18th.
I will use EW's pretentious "high school" grade model. Because it was hilarious when I saw one of the attending film critics named Lisa (recognized her "red" press pass worn as a necklace) stand 'stranded' at the bus stop when the first and very crowded bus I was in passed by her Sunday afternoon.
Rudo y Cursi
Almost good "soccer dramedy" movie. Almost.
Rudo y Cursi is Carlos Cuaron's debut film. Carlos is Alfonso's brother. The film feels a little too much like Y Tu Mama Tambien deja vu, without subliminal backgrounds of the rival brother's movie.
In other words, it's a formula movie with little noteworthy substance. And despite lame attempt at humor, it's a surprisingly negative film that depicts the Mexican people in the unflattering light -- sleazy sports agent, a gold-digging model woman, threatening soccer fans.
The only good entertainment was seeing the Cuaron brothers, Guillermo del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal come up in front to joke about and take Q&A after the screening. It was a hilarious moment when Gael tried to sing on his own at the microphone (he plays a soccer player who tries to co-opt a kitschy singing career) at the goading of the producers. Apparently they said the film is a big hit in Mexico when it opened just a few weeks ago.
Grade: C-
Where is Where?
Next, I saw Where is Where?, a Finnish film featured in New Frontier which features 'media installations' that challenge the conventional fillmaking with "innovative" filming attitude.
Before the screening begins, the director told the audience the film is four hours long despite the film guide category listing the film runs at about 100 minutes. He only said this in jest. The film is composed of four split screens that is shot and edited at the same approximate time. It juxataposes the black & white footages of war and atrocity in French-Algerian war between 1954 and 1962 with the present day of an unflattering-looking middle-aged Finnish woman who does barely anything as the camera revolve around her in the outdoors and in her house. This is far different from 2000 Mike Figgis film experiment Timecode.
To say the film is pretentious and tedious is an understatement. This film prompted the most walkouts I ever saw, in a film festival or mainstream screening at megaplex or arthouse.
There was a massive audience walkout (more than a dozen) during the non-sensical, pointlessly bizarre scene in which the woman sings a song as the young man bangs a drum on the blue-lighted stage for a few minutes too long.
There are footages of long, pointless footages all over the four split screens that go on and on forever that can lull the audience to snooze. There are absolutely bizarre, pointlessly surreal bullshit like Death (like The Seventh Seal character) and a scene involving a pretty blonde nun who hovers up and froze to move around in motion.
Where is Where? concludes with a single-screen footage of Algerian atrocity footage which has little or no connection to the "story." It's a filmmaker's device to manipulative the audience with pretentious moralization when there is no point being made with irrelevant footages of present-day drama.
This is one of the worst films I've ever seen at Sundance. Totally boring and pretentious horseshit.
I warn others who attend the fest NOT to waste their time and money on this "Emperor Has No Clothes" bullshit.
The augience's agony through the pointless tedium and maddeningly pretentiousness of the film may seem gratifying to the director, but the best response is that the director should experience a near-empty subsequent screening. That's the power of the word of mouth. Total hackneyed post-modern trash even pretentious film art pioneer Andy Warhol would find intolerable.
The only good thing about this film is the short preceding the 9-minute film called Nightstill, which is plotless and has time exposure footages of fast-motion clouds through the snow-covered mountains and rotating night sky with illuminated moonshine. That is more entertaining and has the remnant of a genuine substance.
Grade: F
The Maid
A low-budget film from Chile that is surprisingly competent in spite of drab-colored digital camcorder cinematography and sometimes noticeable spelling mistakes in English subtitles. A charming and humorous film that is down to earth and doesn't pander.
It's about a glum-looking maid who has worked for the family for over 20 years and who couldn't adjust to change in the household with the addition of a new maid. She became jealous and cruel towards them to point of forcing them to quit in tears and anger. Until she had a change of heart towards a young woman who brought her out of her emotional shell. Central Station this may not be, but good effort overall, despite unnecessary scenes of nudity, unless you like Chilean tits, both middle-aged and college-age.
The actress who plays The Maid (Catalina Saavedra) made the film watchable because her performance, while not as spectacular as Central Station actress Fernanda Montenegro (IMO was honestly robbed of a Best Actress Oscar), is very good despite the semi-low production values with cinema verite style of editing and cinematography. Her performance is the highlight of the film.
The ending is kind of abrupt that fails to provide satisfactory "emotional closure," though.
Grade: C+
Let's Make Money
This was one of my anticipated documentary films to see at Sundance, and to say it's a severe disappointment is (again) an understatement.
Despite the penetrating and outrageous subject on the evils of vulture capitalism, privitization and globalization, the film's pacing is terrible with long, silent footages interspersed with talking head interviews with the capitalists (one is "economic hitman") and the "economic depredation" victims. The victims complain about the deprivation of their right to economic dignity when the victims are screwed over with the Western nations' unfair trade and protectionist policies.
But the filmmakers deflated the potency of the topic with the godawful snail pacing of the film. The film incorporates almost unrelated footages (some shots of airplane taking off and flying and interviewee sitting and walking around in silence as camera follows). The film have potential to be good if not for bullshit like these. And watching the film with subtitles in multiple languages (English is spoken unsubtitled) can be pretty jarring.
The older, 60-ish patron who sat next to me got up and left shortly before the film ends, presumably because he found it dull as the particular interview with one of the heads went on and on for minutes without a single edit.
The topic would be a great debate starter, but the film destroys it by rendering the subject ungodly tedious for the reason cited above.
Definitely not a primer for economics and poli sci 101 course because most students will snooze through the film after 15 minutes. Slower paced editing style that serve no purpose but to bore the audience is aggravating self-indulgence and this film fails to register respect with me because the filmmaker insisted on snail pacing style mistaken for high artistic value.
Grade: D
Louise-Michel
A French-language film whose title is inspired by 19th century French anarchist of the same name.
A black comedy about an illiterate idiot woman who finds out, along with her co-workers, the textile factory had been closed suddenly without a warning that put their socio-economic survival to desperation. She contrives to seek revenge by hiring a bumbling "he-female" hitman to whack a boss responsible for the closure.
This is a black comedy, alright. There are some shocks to sudden violence and nervous laughs to moments of macabre humor.
This is a very weird French film with a weird, non-sensical plot topped with an even more bizarre ending. (You have to see it to believe it -- it's a homage to prison rape)
Acting is good overall, but the story is out of this world with the inept hitman who appears male but has a female productive organ due to hormone change. The hitman uses a terminal cancer patient and a disabled idiot as "Manchurian candidates" to attempt to assassinate the targets but end up failing because of mistaken identity or ineptitude.
I'm not uptight with political correctness, but the film left a bitter taste in my mouth. And I liked "Very Bad Things".
Only for those who like to seek and watch truly weird French films.
Grade: C-
I bid farewell to Sundance Film Festival. Thank goodness, I don't have to put up with pretentious assholes anymore over there. It's funny to watch some people turn their heads like birds cocking their heads when they spot some shallow, tabloid-whore celebrities walking up and down Main Street with their entourages. And there are promotion shills like "young, dumb and full of cum" Amsel Beer female models dressed in white winter attires with cute St Bernard dogs on leash.
Uppity people are everywhere every time Sundance FF is up, but whaddya expect? C'est la vie.
Maybe I will return with a couple more films this Saturday, but don't be so sure.
Ciao,
Father Death Resurrected
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That's a new one on me...
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Don't they have a catalogue or something? I could tell you half these films sucked just by the descriptions.
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Father Death, if for you Very Bad Thing is a wicked movie then i understand why you don't like Louise Michel.
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It sounds like the cinematic equivalent of a clam chowder enema. Having lived in Sweden many years (a Finnish border country), I can honestly say the Director was probably morbidly amused by the amount of "ignorant Americans" who walked out (his rationalization that allows him to believe those who walked out simply 'didn't get it').
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"pretentious".sounds like you didn't have a very good time.
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This is Father Death. I read the descriptions carefully and decide which film to see that fits my time slot.I prefer foreign films, fiction and documentary, to broaden the experience.
Sundance FF director/organizer Geoffrey Gilmore praised "Where is Where" with orgasmic jubilation in the catalog "capsule review". He let this piece of shit slip through while "quality" rejected films languish in obscurity.There are thousands of films submitted to Sundance every year. Just one feature film to make it is considered lucky unless you're an established filmmaker who has established his or her presence at the festival, which will increase the chance of being accepted. It's like being an alumni returning to reunion invitation again.
Sundance FF catalog with capsule reviews has "film reviewers" whose taste may be questionable. That's why the disproportionate majority of the submitted films is disappointing or just plain execrable. I can now check off Geoffrey Gilmore as an idiot who let that film slip through the crack. Maybe he likes unleashing the torment on the audience who are bamboozled with his bullshit reviews.It is EXCEEDINGLY rare great films are "discovered" at Sundance. Believe me, I look for films heard through positive word of mouth and I would rave about the movie that overcome my typically low expectation. Every major film festival in the U.S. is not so selective when they have to show the wide range of films that may or may not meet the festival moviegoers' expectation. I'm a lot more critical now and I'm willing to let it slide if I see one of the midnight films. (I cannot reveal the title yet but hope to get in thru wait list) I just saw HELL RIDE on DVD and it's a total piece of garbage that is not even kitschy but takes itself too seriously. That POS movie premiered at Sundance 2008. I'm glad I skipped it because every screening was "sold out" well in advance.Sundance has about a hundred movies to choose from, and I had to read the catalog capsule reviews to judge whether I should blow $15 to see a film. I have yet to hear about any great film at Sundance 2009, and so far nothing. Same with 2008.IMO, the best films to come out of Sundance so far are Reservoir Dogs, El Mariachi, Crumb, Central Station, Gods & Monsters, Hana-Bi (Fireworks), Smoke Signals (I think Harry said this is the best film of 1998), Sound & Fury, Herod's Law, Momento, Supersize Me, and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head. I still haven't seen Donnie Darko yet.Sundance is not as selective as the legend would have you believe. They do pick really shitty films that piss off some patrons who might believe they're wasting time and money on turds. That is why there are VERY few diamonds in the rough. Sundance does and will always exhibit truly awful films that are borderline offensive in deliberately provocative content (there are some Sundance movies with truly gross homo sex in it -- and I loved Brokeback Mountain) or pretentious attitude or just plain terrible.Sorry for the overuse of the word "pretentious," but Sundance is really about the "P" word with too many sponsors unleashing hot live models to plug the products. Paris Hilton, 50 Cent & vapid idiocy. That's why I'm retiring. Good riddance. -
I did not see it yet, but I wanted to say that the directors of this movie are also 2 of the funniest actors (dark humor-wise) here in france. They are part of a TV show (Groland) that is one of the few places for true humor that last on french TV. Thanks to them, and sorry for my english.
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