Oh, all right then, Tribeca.

I've all but ignored the Tribeca Film Festival since its inception seven years ago, without much regret. Initially, it seemed more like a post-9/11 neighborhood marketing tool than an actual festival—although, to be fair, most "actual" festivals probably started out much the same way. More than that, each year's lineup inspired a resounding "ehh," consisting largely of movies I'd already seen at other festivals and completely unknown quantities. To this day I think the only Tribeca screening I've ever attended was Guy Maddin's Cowards Bend the Knee, and even that I would have already seen had Rotterdam shown a print rather than forcing you to watch the thing by stooping to look through mock peepholes. (Seriously.)

That's about to change, however. This year the festival actively solicited my attention for the first time, and while I did almost everything in my power to dissuade them from accrediting me (you should see how snotty my application letter was), they chose to do so anyway. And by god I actually do see at least eight films I want to check out this year, which is about four times as many as there have been in any previous year. Those would be:

• Garapa, directed by José Padilha (Bus 174).
• The Girlfriend Experience, directed by Steven Soderbergh.
• In the Loop, which was well received at Sundance.
• Kobe Doin' Work, directed by Spike Lee.
• My Dear Enemy, which Michael Sicinski quite liked and that's good enough for me.
• Outrage, directed by Kirby Dick (Sick).
• Salt of This Sea, one of the remaining Cannes '08 films I haven't seen/sampled.
• Whatever Works, directed by Woody Allen.

I've already seen Moon and Still Walking. Anyone have any other strong recommendations? Unlike ND/NF, Tribeca has no sterling track record regarding fledgling filmmakers and its slate is way too big for me to see everything. If there's something in there that you consider unmissable, let me know (and tell me why).

Credit where due.

This is essentially a continuation of the previous entry, but I've already posted two addendums (addenda?) down there and am concerned that this one might get overlooked.

Anyway, while I remain disappointed with the way TONY chose to cover ND/NF this year, after talking privately with a couple of the "culprits" I'm willing to concede that I overreacted a little. Not only did I fail to consider (see addendum to previous post) that they might not have been at the press screenings because they were watching the films on video, but I also mistakenly assumed that what I saw in the print magazine represented everything they planned to offer. As it turns out, David Fear has posted the specific recommendations I sought on TONY's film blog. I still contend that this material should have been in the print magazine—as a faithful reader, in all honesty I almost never look at the website—but I accordingly withdraw some of my harsher remarks. I should have checked with them before venting. This is precisely why I'm a critic and not a reporter.

The thing is, this festival does matter. Yes, I kick off every year's intro by noting that most of the films suck. And most of them do suck, frankly, which is why we need venues like TONY and the Voice to steer us toward the few that don't. But the list of notable filmmakers first introduced to New York audiences by New Directors/New Films is vast and hugely impressive. I just skimmed my viewing logs over the last decade or so and here's what I came up with:

Michael Almereyda
Darren Aronofsky
Ramin Bahrani
Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky
Laurent Cantet
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Guillermo Del Toro
Vincent Gallo
Matteo Garrone
Jia Zhang-ke
Cédric Kahn
Abdellatif Kechiche
Lodge Kerrigan
Kim Ki-duk
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Lee Chang-dong
Julia Loktev
Shane Meadows
Christopher Nolan
François Ozon
Lynne Ramsay
Kelly Reichardt
Ulrich Seidl
Todd Solondz
Pablo Trapero
Tsai Ming-liang
Tom Tykwer

And that's a pretty selective list. I didn't include Neil LaBute, for example, because most people would agree that it's been all downhill for him since In the Company of Men (though Lakeview Terrace is more interesting than you think). Nor did I include folks like Lance Hammer who have yet to even make film #2. Point is, any New York cinephile striving to remain current needs to take ND/NF seriously. Even if there are only two or three truly significant films shown in any given year, those two or three films tell us where we're headed. It's a film critic's job to identify them for us. Not that critics will always agree, of course—I was actually stunned to find that Slant gave Home a fairly positive review—but how can a consensus even begin to form if there aren't a multitude of sharp writers doing the necessary legwork? So the fact that major publications are increasingly blowing off comprehensive review-based coverage in favor of interviews and profiles remains troubling.

Dereliction of duty.

Speaking of New Directors/New Films, and at the considerable risk of pissing off three friends of mine, I have to say I'm very disappointed with Time Out New York's increasingly negligible coverage of this key event on the city's film calendar. When I worked at the magazine from 2000-2004, the film staff (which consisted of an editor and two full-time writers, then as now) made an effort to see every film in the program, with the intention of being able to recommend at least a half-dozen specific films to our readers. Unfortunately, the articles from most of those years don't seem to exist online anymore—the TONY website torched most of its archive years ago (thanks buds), and I couldn't find much in the Wayback Machine (which is tough to navigate unless you have the precise URL you're looking for). But even in the final rundown I took part in, five years ago, which was relegated to a half-page box (as opposed to being the section opener), we were still doing our best to tell folks which films in the series were worth their time and money. (Funny coincidence: Two of the six films we highlight were directed by Ursula Meier and Ondi Timoner, who are both in this year's lineup as well.)

By dispiriting contrast, the current issue (which doesn't yet seem to be available online), while it devotes a full page to ND/NF, merely offers brief interviews with three directors. No assessment of any kind is made of any film. Which is probably because, as far as I can tell, TONY's film staff hasn't even seen the films. I didn't catch sight of David Fear, Josh Rothkopf or Keith Uhlich at any of the press screenings I attended. (Lest somebody suggest that a full-time critic has no time for such things, I saw A.O. Scott at literally every single screening.) Granted, I missed the first week and a half, so they may well have checked in at the beginning, but it doesn't much matter if they're not passing word along to their readers. I mean jesus, even the capsule on Treeless Mountain in the listings section is pathetic: "Two children are shuttled between family members after the mother abandons them." That's it, guys? For a notable film that's been kicking around since Toronto? Has none of you seen Treeless Mountain yet? Seriously?

I bitch because I care. Right now I still have access to press screenings, but one of these years I may not. If that happens, I'm gonna be looking for some guidance. And if a weekly magazine specifically devoted to New York events, with three professional film critics on staff, can't be bothered to do advance scouting on a major series like ND/NF and offer specific recommendations about which films deserve attention, then it's no wonder publishing is going to the blogs. With all due respect to my pals at the magazine, this year's coverage is unworthy of your talents and stature. Please try to do better.

ADDENDUM/RETRACTION/OOPS: It's been brought to my attention that many critics nowadays, rather than attending the press screenings (and, ahem, seeing the films properly), get ND/NF to send them screeners that they can watch at home. That was apparently the case here. So I apologize for suggesting that David, Josh and Keith didn't even bother to see the films. However, as noted above, that doesn't materially affect my complaint, and in fact the coverage in this week's issue could have been written as is even if they hadn't seen any of the films. (The opener, apart from a one-sentence plot summary for each film, consists entirely—every word—of quotes from interview subjects.) Which is absurd, frankly, given that the very function of Time Out New York is to help New Yorkers determine what to do this week. How helpful is TONY's ND/NF coverage in that respect? A: Totally un-.

AND ONE FURTHER NOTE: Just now saw the Village Voice's ND/NF rundown, which is almost as useless. Plenty of interviews but precious little opinion or analysis, from a paper that used to run a capsule review of practically every film. If it's genuinely comprehensive coverage you seek—coverage that might help you decide whether it's worth blowing $12 and two hours on any of these films—look no further than Slant, though of course as always you'll need to adjust for its film staff's tendency to be totally wack.

New Directors/New Films 2009

[Home, directed by Ursula Meier]


New Directors/New Films
25 March - 5 April
Museum of Modern Art | Film Society of Lincoln Center

(I'll never be able to improve on the intro I wrote in 2003, so here it is again, slightly updated.)

Comes a time when a man has to say, in effect: Hey, you know the drill, and if you don't know the drill then you've been painfully remiss in your study of the drill and Remedial Drill Appreciation is probably in order. This festival takes place in New York City every spring. It is called New Directors/New Films. Its focus is new directors and the new films they have made. Most of these pictures are vaguely promising at best, who-did-the-Albanian-cultural-minister-blow-to-get-this-selected-and-where-can-I-meet-a-girl-with-that-kind-of-skill-and-enthusiasm at worst. Occasionally, however, they sneak an Old Joy or a Day Night Day Night or a Late Marriage in there, so it pays to be exhaustive, however exhausting that may be. This year, as a gesture of respect, I've decided to just ignore the (many) movies I didn't make it past reel two of, except to note in passing that the Berlin jury that awarded the Golden Bear to Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow has a much higher tolerance for zombified dolour than I do. Also, due to an administrative snafu of some kind I didn't receive word about this year's press screenings until they were already half over and so missed a number of notable films, at least a few of which I hope to catch up with at public screenings over the next couple of weeks. But I got my one keeper already, so I'm happy. What follows are not so much reviews as drive-by impressions, largely unencumbered by clarity or insight but liberally garnished with sarcasm. I am too lazy to provide context; if you want to know some basic information about these films, mosey over here. Anybody falls below a certain level I'm not permitted, listen to me, I'm not permitted to give them the premium leads. I'm trying to run an office here. Will you go to lunch. Go to lunch. Will you go to lunch.

---

Home (Ursula Meier, Switzerland/France/Belgium): 83.
Premiered at: Cannes 2008 (Critics Week)
[Meier is now officially one of world cinema's best-kept secrets. And yet as much as I loved her little-seen debut, Strong Shoulders, about a teenaged girl dangerously obsessed with track and field—you'll find it clinging to the bottom of my 2003 top ten list—that film's blunt, coarse naturalism in no way prepared me for the bughouse absurdism of Home, which transplants the typical French-language domestic drama into a live-action version of Frogger. Basic premise is simple: Eccentric family lives in boondocks alongside unfinished stretch of highway; highway finally opens; all hell breaks loose. But Meier finds in this apparent one-joke idea both an inexhaustible source of comic invention—the blasé insanity here sometimes rivals Charlie Kaufman at his best—and a Big Obvious Metaphor that turns out to be much thornier than it initially appears. (For best results, think house = country and cars= foreigners, although judging from her remarks in the press kit it seems as if that notion never even occurred to Meier. Doesn't matter; the film still works beautifully as xenophobic critique.) Casting Isabelle Huppert and Olivier Gourmet as mère and père was particularly inspired, as both are savvy enough to play against the ludicrousness of the material, and also automatically disarm via years of accumulated serious-art-film baggage. Finale admittedly gets a tad overemphatic, but then there wasn't any other direction to take it, really, so I'm apt to be indulgent. And while Strong Shoulders wasn't especially impressive from a formal standpoint, Meier directs the hell out of this one, mining what's essentially a single location for one perfectly composed shot after another. Nutty, inspired and cutting...but also utterly abstract, which inevitably means that the humanism-lovin' gatekeepers don't give a shit. Their loss.]

HOME bande-annonce 02
Uploaded by homelefilm

BirdWatchers (Marco Bechis, Italy/Brazil): 75
Premiered at: Venice 2008 (Competition)
[Concludes with copious text detailing the plight of the Guarani-Kaiowà, along with the requisite here's-how-you-can-help info—which comes as a huge surprise, because the film itself skirts didacticism like nobody's business. I'm generally dubious (with good cause, I'd say) about earnest white dudes who try to represent another culture in a fictional context, but Bechis pulls off a tremendous balancing act here, respecting the Guaranis' undeniable strangeness (from a white perspective) while avoiding cheap exoticism—not to mention the smug, self-conscious "humor" of something like '98 ND/NF hit Smoke Signals, which was made by actual Native Americans and yet still comes across as painfully condescending. It helps that Bechis gets fantastic performances from his non-pro Indian cast, each of whom seems fully at ease in front of the camera and yet somehow retains a certain vaguely amused distance at the same time. (Not sure if IFC plans to release this in theaters, but if so, FYC: Alicélia Batista Cabreira, Best Supporting Actress.) Only in the final stretch, when something like a narrative belatedly emerges, does it become clear that we're experiencing a carefully disguised plea for understanding; the vast majority of BirdWatchers functions as freewheeling community portrait, with a beguiling rhythm and considerable dry wit.]



We Live in Public (Ondi Timoner, USA): 59
Premiered at: Sundance 2009 (Documentary Competition, which it won)
[Undeniably fascinating, but Timoner's throughline seems awfully ad hoc. Only the title experiment really foreshadows the exhibitionism.com surge we're experiencing today, and even that was done first by Jennifer "Jennicam" Ringley, who I'm pretty sure was a much bigger Net phenomenon. (I vividly recall all the time I spent in 1996 ignoring freely available Internet porn in favor of trying to catch a fleeting glimpse of this perfectly ordinary young woman undressing; it almost seems charming now.) But Timoner had tons of footage she'd shot at Quiet a decade ago, so we spend almost half the film watching a pretty stupid conceptual-art project that has little to do with Twitter or Facebook or MySpace or really much of anything apart from the antics of a bunch of people bored enough to play guinea pig for a month. Likewise pseudo.com, which was ahead of its time but also wound up being an object lesson in precisely how Internet content was not going to work. Harris remains a fascinating figure—his Luvvy persona is almost too bizarre to believe—but the case for his uncanny prescience seems pretty weak to me, and I trust the film even less after discovering that today he's not just hangin' in Ethopia teaching basketball to little kids, as the film implies, but is in fact CEO of the African Entertainment Network, a factoid that Timoner carefully fails to mention because it doesn't fit the character arc she's manufactured. An absorbing crock.]



Can Go Through Skin (Esther Rots, The Netherlands): 57
Premiered at: Rotterdam 2009
[Virtually a one-woman show, and superb lead actress Rifka Lodeizen is ready for her many disorienting close-ups, Ms. Rots. I got unduly excited early on when it looked as if a truly startling act of violence was going to be all but ignored—or at least treated as just one notable event of many, no more or less pivotal than Marieke being dumped by her boyfriend (she's unstable from the opening seconds, well before she's attacked) or moving out to the country to renovate the big spooky house. So the film's gradual but unmistakable shift into post-traumatic psychotherapy, complete with flashbacks and fantasy sequences, was disappointing. But Rots is clearly talented, and her expert control of tone and mood in the first few reels suggests that she may eventually be capable of filling the mysteriously vacant spot where Lynne Ramsay used to reside. (What happened there?) Lodeizen, for her part, calls to mind the mercurial anguish of Samantha Morton way back in Under the Skin (ND/NF '97), which this movie resembles in more than just its title. Carine Adler subsequently vanished; I don't think for a moment that Rots will do the same. But then I wouldn't have thought that of Ramsay, either. Seriously, anyone know what happened?]

(Can't find an embeddable trailer, but you can watch one—with English subtitles, even!—here.)

The Cove (Louie Psihoyos, USA): 55
Premiered at: Sundance 2009 (Documentary Competition)
[By Psihoyos' own admission, this is unapologetic advocacy journalism, specifically engineered to spearhead a movement. And on that level it's undeniably effective, unless you're somehow left cold by the horrific sight of friendly dolphins being wantonly butchered, in which case whether or not you like this movie is the least of your problems. That's Ed, The Cove isn't much of an actual film, in the sense that it doesn't really demand 94 minutes of your time; Richard O'Barry's personal journey from Flipper's trainer to maniacal, oft-arrested free-the-dolphins activist holds your attention, but otherwise you're just kinda grimly waiting for the nightmare footage you just know they must be reserving for the last few minutes, the better to send us all straight from the theater to our checkbooks and Paypal accounts. Which is both pragmatic and in a certain sense admirable, but if you're looking for anything vaguely resembling cinema, you've come to entirely the wrong place.]



More to come, possibly. New entries, if any, will be added up top.

I'm a little fuzzy on why Armond White does not care for Hunger.

(# of sentences/phrases trimmed from the original review in what follows: not as many as you might think.)

"Hunger, the first film by British fine artist Steve McQueen..."

"...really a series of startling kinetic-art panels."

"There hasn't been a cinema/art project this outrageous since Peter Greenaway confused big-screen and art-gallery media in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1987)."

"McQueen-the-artiste gives himself the luxury of detachment..."

"...he looks at cruelty (prisoner degeneracy, antagonistic authority) and makes gestures at spirtuality, all with an art-major's moral indifference."

"You could use art-major terms like 'transgressive' and 'body-conscious' to justify McQueen's aesthetic..."

"But the fact remains: Hunger is tough to watch. It merely rewards one's art-snobbery and can only be excused as a series of art postures."

"If McQueen is to be praised as a genuine moviemaker, it can only be in the art school terms that critics denied to [Mel] Gibson's [The] Passion [of the Christ]."

"Instead of professing faith, McQueen plays art-school games."

"It's what art students understand as jouissance (combining sexual and spiritual pleasure). This does nothing to enhance one's understanding of the Irish troubles."

"McQueen offers the transformation of spirituality into Art, whereas Mel Gibson [stop laughing—md'a] did the extraordinary, Dreyer-like opposite."

"Hunger resembles Carlos Reygadas' sub-Dreyer Stellet Licht—a self congratulatory [all together now!—md'a] art project."

"Also, when I was six years old the Rhode Island School of Design killed my cat."

A heartfelt but nonetheless semi-objective plug.

Longtime readers will know that I pull no punches, even regarding films written and/or directed by close personal friends. One of my buds' pictures was strong enough to be selected for Sundance's Dramatic Competition and wound up getting a moderate theatrical release; I gave it 57 good-effort points of criticism. Another pal still laughs when he recalls the kindest response I could come up with after seeing his feature debut: "Well, that wasn't terrible!" (40 points of criticism; terrible would be < 28, I decided.) So when I urge those of you in the greater Los Angeles area to check out a new indie film that'll be screening at Method Fest later this month, and then confess that it's the work of my friend Nicholas Gray, trust that this is not just me being loyal. I wouldn't call your attention to it if I didn't genuinely consider it worth your time.

First, I must apologize for the title, which Nicholas is very well aware I can't stand. (When I told him I was doing this he insisted that I be 100% honest.) The film is called If You Could Say It in Words, and for the most part it's a gratifyingly subtle and remarkably assured (for a novice filmmaker) character study that happens to be—and one of the most impressive things about this film is that it really does seem like it just happens to be—about someone with Asperger's Syndrome. I'm telling you that up front because you'll find out anyway if you click on the link to the film's website or read the festival blurb or whatever, but what's kind of amazing is that if you didn't know this in advance it might not dawn on you until deep in the movie's second act. Apparently, there was an egregiously mawkish Asperger's movie at Sundance this year (I haven't seen it), but Words (as I guess I'll call it for short) couldn't possibly be less disease-of-the-week. I have significant problems with the ending, and as a result my rating wound up being a 54 (which drives Nicholas nuts because 54 is my top C+ rating and he keeps wanting to shove it up into the B- column), but to be honest I was kind of dreading watching the film, afraid I was going to have find some tactful way of telling Nicholas it blows, and was very pleasantly surprised.

But the main reason I'm urging you Angelenos to check it out is because Method Fest, which I had frankly never heard of before, is a festival specifically dedicated to "breakout acting in independent film," and Words does in fact feature one of the most stunning performances I've seen in the past couple of years—easily my top Best Actress pick for various polls and surveys, at this writing, should the film get a New York commercial release. That would be the young woman pictured above, name of Marin Ireland. Alvin Keith, who plays the Asperger's dude, is also quite strong, nicely underplaying in what's obviously a fairly tricky role. But it's Ireland's stunningly naturalistic and almost preternaturally sensitive work as the woman who falls for him, without quite understanding the nature of his quirks, that gives Words its considerable power and prevents it from ever lapsing into cheap bathos. I was literally only ten minutes into the film when I stopped the DVD and started Googling the hell out of her to find out who this instantly riveting presence was. (An accomplished and award-winning theater actress, it turned out; she's currently starring in Neil LaBute's latest on Broadway.) Even if you don't care for the movie overall—and, again, I'm pretty mixed on it myself—you'll be glad later that you got in on the ground floor of what's sure to be an amazing career.

If You Could Say It in Words screens at the Calabasas Civic Center at 7pm on Sunday, 29 March. Stop by, witness a future star, and tell Nicholas his movie still needs a better title.

A few quick thoughts about Duplicity (78).

Unfortunately, I'm not assigned to review Duplicity, as both The Class and Che happen to open in Las Vegas next week. So I may as well make my case here (in speedy bullet-point fashion), especially since there are zero reviews out at this writing and I honestly have no idea what the consensus opinion is likely to be. That this film is less overtly weighty and much more twisty than Michael Clayton suggests to me that it's doomed to be underappreciated, but I hope I'm wrong.

• More than anyone else in Hollywood right now, Tony Gilroy understands how to open a movie. No throat-clearing, no "establishing"—he just tosses you in and trusts that you'll enjoy swimming out. His in medias res approach here isn't nearly as Wait WTF? as Tom Wilkinson's lunatic monologue in Clayton—he saves the real cognitive dissonance for a flashback in Rome about a third of the way through—but it's still immensely satisfying in its confidence and chutzpah, and he gets a look from Julia Roberts just before cutting to the title sequence that essentially summarizes his theme in a single glance.

• Speaking of the title sequence: legendary. Beyond inspired. I don't want to say any more for fear of ruining the experience for people (though you can see a little of it in the trailer). But already I was thinking, "Wow, this guy is a goddamn filmmaker," which I didn't really get from Clayton except in snippets (e.g. the deer). My Skandies Best Scene favorite is pretty much locked.

• As you probably know, the subject is corporate espionage. But as in all the best films, that's strictly a cover, and Gilroy isn't especially subtle—nor need he be, given the glossy-entertainment mode in which he's working—about using it as a sweeping metaphor for issues of trust in a romantic relationship. In fact the film has a unique structure in which it periodically shifts directly from text to subtext, with the latter rising upward in repeated flashbacks that seem expository but rarely actually are. At the same time, Gilroy can't resist giving his lovers dialogue that stresses how their profession makes them different from other people—he's playful enough to create an obvious metaphor and yet pretend to offer plausible deniability. But the central question here is still potent and unanswerable, which is to say absolutely perfect for drama: Given that almost every relationship is founded on lies (if only because courtship involves magnifying advantages and suppressing/hiding flaws), how can we proceed once we've determined that our inamorata is every bit as full of shit as we are? And how certain are we that this person we've chosen as a partner really has the same agenda that we do?

• Unfortunately—I almost want to say "tragically"—Gilroy allows his exceedingly clever plot to undercut his theme in the home stretch. The movie reaches what could have been a tremendously satisfying conclusion (it's the scene in the airport, which you also see a little of in the trailer: "Would it make any difference if I said I love you?" "If you said it or if I believed you?") and then proceeds to one final rug-pull, which turns out to be one too many. I actually quite like Gilroy's idea considered in a vacuum—it's a really bold choice, especially for a big mainstream film like this one—but in context it makes hash of the emotional stakes he's worked so hard to raise, so that the film now seems as if it's actually just about corporate espionage after all. (It also raises a few retrospective-logic questions, one in particular regarding Tom McCarthy's character.) I can see someone making the case that the very last shot restores that sense of troubling humanity—that's certainly Gilroy's intention—but it didn't quite work for me, I'm afraid.

• That big reservation aside, if the average Hollywood film were even half as consistently smart and witty and assured as Duplicity, I would never leave the Times Square multiplexes. There's not one wasted scene, not a single unmemorable supporting character. Gilroy scatters lovely and/or hilarious grace notes everywhere, from Roberts demanding that Owen rehearse their upcoming performance minus his robe to the alternate scheme that never quite happens (involving frozen pizza) to Clive Owen's New York associates performing dueling impressions of his crisp British accent. ("I own you." "I own you.") Even more than in Clayton, Gilroy just nails old-Hollywood effervescence, reminding you what a big star vehicle with a crafty Byzantine plot is supposed to look like. He's at once pioneer and throwback, and reason for hope.

• Oh yeah, the actors. Nothing award-worthy, but they're all good.

Festival Flashback: Week of 13 Mar.

Sunshine Cleaning (Christine Jeffs, USA): 44 [Sundance '08]

My guess is that a lot of the people reading this have at least one screenplay in progress. Might I make a suggestion? You know that Big Secret you've got lurking somewhere in the third act—the traumatic past incident that retroactively explains your characters' troubling present-day neuroses? Ditch it. Lose it. Nuke it. You don't need it. It doesn't help.

Had I made this plea a year ago, perhaps we might all have been spared the ordeal of Sunshine Cleaning, one of the big-buzz titles in this year's Dramatic Competition. Directed by New Zealand native Christine Jeffs, whose mildly promising debut Rain now seems a distant memory (she also made Sylvia, the inert Plath biopic starring Gwyneth Paltrow), it stars Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, both in reasonably fine form, as hard-luck sisters who start a new business wiping up the blood and viscera that accumulates at crime scenes. The ick factor makes for a few funny moments, but, alas, screenwriter Megan Holley has more serious issues in mind. Both young women seem devoted to their father (Alan Arkin, reprising his labored shtick from that other Sunshine movie), but Mom is nowhere in sight. Might our heroines possibly be working through some personal issues related to the discovery of a bloody, horrific mess? And isn't that conveeeenient. People, this sort of Freudian nonsense is killing narrative fiction. Characters are far more intriguing and memorable when their behavior can't be reduced to the sum of their childhood traumas. Just let them be however screwed up they are; we'll happily speculate about the cause. (Case in point: the underrated Margot at the Wedding.)

Unfortunately, I failed to get into Sugar, which all reports suggest boasts the same impressive degree of relaxed naturalism as Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's previous Sundance triumph, Half Nelson. [MARCH 2009: Much less impressive, sadly.] But it sounds like the antidote to the Sunshine Cleanings that infest this festival. [MARCH 2009: Still yes, however.]

Also opening this week is Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata (60), which was the very last film I saw at NYFF '08 and which consequently became one of last year's inevitable burnout casualties, review-wise. Not that I have a whole lot to say about it now. Interesting to see Kurosawa shift his apocalyptic sensibility to an ostensibly ordinary domestic drama, but I'm basically down with the faction who thinks the lunatic third act is something of a sharkjumper, only partially redeemed by a beautifully judged denouement. Plus I've now seen too many recent movies about patriarchs hiding their termination from their families, even if two of them (Time Out and The Adversary) were inspired by the same real-life incident. Still very much worth your time, of course, and I was startled to realize halfway through that Teruyuki Kagawa, the actor who plays the lumpen husband and father, was also the maniacally pissed-off Japanese prisoner in Devils on the Doorstep. Now that's range.

Also, today I received official confirmation of my Cannes accreditation, so I'll definitely be there. My heartfelt thanks yet again to the many generous folks who made this possible. Your awesomeness sustains me.

Festival Flashback: Week of 6 Mar.

Phoebe in Wonderland (Daniel Barnz, USA): 53 [Sundance '08]

The hottest ticket at Sundance 2007 — for the increasingly desperate press, if not for the general public — was Hounddog, in which Dakota Fanning played a barefoot farm girl so desperate for tickets to see Elvis Presley that she was willing to strip naked and gyrate around à la The King, only to get brutally raped for her trouble. Many fewer journalists flocked to see this year's less sensationalistic Phoebe in Wonderland, starring Dakota's equally precocious younger sister Elle — which is a shame, since it's a much more interesting film, albeit somewhat muddled. Phoebe's dangerous obsession isn't Elvis but Alice: Her mother (Felicity Huffman) has been working for years on a Lewis Carroll dissertation, and Phoebe desperately wants the lead role in her grade school's production of Alice in Wonderland, to be directed — sort of — by a singularly bizarre new drama teacher (Patricia Clarkson). So badly does Phoebe want the part, in fact, that she devises an elaborate system of games and rituals designed to secure it for her. She paces the school hallway for hours, carefully avoiding any cracks in the floor. She hops up the stairs at her house, then hops down twice, backwards, then up again, then a half-turn, clapping, then repeat. She washes her hands again and again and again, until they bleed.

Writer-director Daniel Barnz plays a rather pointless game of keep-away with Phoebe's condition, which isn't named until the movie's final moments, but I'll respect his wishes. (I'm pretty sure it's two comorbid conditions, actually, though the script doesn't specify; if I tell you that she also shrugs her shoulders a lot and occasionally repeats other people's sentences, that should clinch it for the neuro-heads.) Barnz's goal here — quite an admirable one, in an after-school special kind of way — is to suggest that such conditions are only the extreme end of a continuum upon which we all reside. But he also wants to make a more general plea for tolerance, so we get a subplot about an effeminate little boy in Phoebe's class who wants to play the Red Queen in drag and is immediately labeled queer. And he also wants Clarkson's drama teacher to be one of those Dead Poets Society educational martyrs who encourage kids to chuck all rules and regs before being marched to the guillotine by some humorless authority figure (here, inexplicably, Campbell Scott, who can't do humorless with a gun to his head). And he also wants to beguile us with Gilliamesque fantasy sequences, at which he sucks, quite frankly. The main reason to see Phoebe in Wonderland is for yet another astonishing Fanning performance. How these little girls are able to summon such powerful reserves of fear and anguish and terror, I have no idea. I'm not really sure I want to know, to be honest.

Also opening this week in NYC but not previously addressed by me except via Twitter:

Frontier of Dawn (Philippe Garrel, France): 43
[Why go to all the trouble of creating ravishing b&w compositions if you're only gonna infect them with the empty, preening narcissism of Louis Garrel? Oh, right, because you spawned him, etc. Early scenes still fairly potent, nicely capturing the mercurial highs and lows of infatuation-as-self-regard, but Frontier pretty much flatlines when Smet does (SPOILER!), since we're then trapped with a couple of good-looking vacuums and their travails in cozy domesticity. And while I didn't find the film's subsequent shift into the quasi-supernatural remotely problematic (Orpheus being a personal favorite), Garrel's approach is so studiously uninflected that he needs an actor with depth and charisma to provide an emotional charge. Which I believe is where we came in...]

Tokyo! (Michel Gondry/Leos Carax/Bong Joon-ho, Japan): 56
[A rare omnibus film where my overall reaction is mixed not because the quality of the individual shorts varies wildly, but because all three are kinda sorta okay, flawed but intriguing. Gondry's in full-bore cute-whimsy mode, which I find largely insufferable at feature length but could tolerate here in a reasonably small dose; the idea itself is so bizarre that you can't help but shake your head in wonder. Carax is making a heavy-handed statement—albeit one that's admirably critical of Japanese xenophobia, given the nature of the project—but it's hard to feel too preached at when you're watching Denis Lavant stumbling down the street in crazy-troll regalia, muttering gibberish and licking passersby. And while Bong's segment ultimately succumbs to bathos, its details are fascinating enough to make me wish he'd expand it into a longer, grittier film about the hikikomori phenomenon, which really begs to be addressed by a sensitive, probing outsider.]

I currently don't intend to see Watchmen, if you're wondering. Read the original in comic form at the time (despite not being at all a comics person; my friend Chris tipped me off) and consider it a masterpiece; can't imagine it surviving adaptation into any other medium, and the reviews seem to confirm that it's a Fotonovel at best.