Since we last saw our caped.. err, jacket wearing.. crusa.. film watcher.. he's watched some more films.
June 11th, a Wednesday, was sleepsville: My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin/Canada) I'm not sure if I would've had the same reaction to this film if the director hadn't told us before the film started that a) he hadn't done any research at all before starting on this documentary (I kept waiting for him to use the word Truthiness) and b) it's a very hypnotic film. I liked this, it felt a lot like The Saddest Music in the World which he also made (and I also slept through bits of). Maybe he didn't want me to feel betrayed when a women does a documentary a few year from now demonstrating some of the "facts" in this film to be untrue.
Then we had Foster Child (Brillante Mendoza/Philippines) which wasn't a documentary but felt a lot like one, very fly on the wall for most of the film. Didn't keep me awake. There were a few "Really?? That's what's happening?!" moments, but not enough.
And then The Sky, The Earth and the Rain (Jose Luis Torres LEiva/France, Germany, Chile). I can't remember what happened at all.. hmm.. nope.. the short blurb from the SFF web site didn't help.. the longer description from the programme didn't do it for me.. maybe I slept through the entire film? Was this the film people hissed at when the credits finally rolled?
Finally.. (long day) we saw La Corona (Amanda Micheli, Isabel Vega/USA) or, The Crown. About a beauty pageant in a Colombian women's prison. Saying that it was good enough to keep me awake isn't really high praise, but it is true.
Thursday was much better, Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa/The Netherlands, Japan, Hong Kong) is a film, on the surface, about a Japanese business man who loses his job and can't face telling his wife so wanders around Tokyo each day instead of going to work. Apparently that happens a lot. This was a beautiful film with a lot more going on than I'm going to write about, but it's too slow for me to recommend it to you.
The Song of Sparrows (Majid Majidi/Iran) was also just lovely, and I'm probably not going to recommend this one to you either.
Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient (Todd McCarthy/USA) was the last film of the day. A documentary about a man who apparently everyone in the film industry knows. Watch it to try to make out the name of the actress David Straton links nearly-libellously in a bleeped out portion of the film. Not a recommendation.
Friday was a day off. Much Grand Theft Auto IV was played (mostly the night before).
Saturday started with Lake Tahoe (Fernando Eimbcke/Mexico) this feels all quirky and arty.. it turns out it's very emotional but I didn't really feel what I knew I was supposed to be feeling.. so I'm not sure it worked. It was good tho. Again, too slow for a recommendation.
And ended with Stop Loss (Kimberly Peirce/USA). Okay.. what to say.. it's not a big explosive battle movie (but it'll feel like one for the first few minutes), it's not really an examination of most of the issues raised by the Iraq war, it's really just about one thing. Stop Loss. "not letting a military member separate or retire, once their required term of service is complete" I guess I wanted it to be about more. And I wasn't that happy with the ending. I'm going to hesitantly recommend this one.
Sunday (today!) started with the single most popular film of the festival (I assume, this was the first film I couldn't use the seat next to me to keep my bag off the floor) In Bruges (Martin McDonagh/Belgium, United Kingdom) Colin Farrel, Ralph Fiennes. Very funny gangster filum. Recommended.
And ended with Terror's Advocate (Barbet Schroeder/France). Densely packed documentary about Jacques Verges, a lawyer who has represented, amongst others, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, and President Slobodan Milosevic (not in the film). I couldn't keep up with the details. Worth trying to if you've got a better brain than mine.
Only twenty-two films left to see.