I consider it both an ultra cool and crazy bold decision to cater an entire film festival towards one specific type of film.  Doing this can, and often will, alienate a lot of people.  Honestly, how many people anxiously await the Bicycle Film Festival, or the Queer Women of Color Film Festival who aren’t either avid cyclists or black gay females?

As a film enthusiast, I don’t go to festivals based solely on whether or not my race, and/or lifestyle match the festival’s program.  I seek out festivals hoping to find that diamond in the ruff movie that will most likely never get a wide release.  That movie that should have been nominated for an Oscar but you know never will.  Last year’s Green Film Festival had a few of those movies and had I been the type of person to judge a book by its cover I never would have seen them.

My point is, you shouldn’t attend a film festival based on name alone.  Take the Green Film Festival for example.  My initial instinct upon hearing about this festival dedicated to exploring green issues and sustainable living was that it was secretly, or overtly, in cahoots with Green Peace and that all of their films would be propagandist shit.  How wrong I was.  Two Werner Herzog narrated features (one of which featured him voicing a plastic bag), a Brazilian doc, Hauling, which ended up being in my top 10 docs of the year, and a life-changing doc in Bag-It that will forever change the way I view my environment were some of last year’s highlights.  As a film fan I am pretty stoked for this year’s lineup.

The 2nd Annual Green Film Festival goes for a week, from March 1st to the 7th and takes place at the SF Film Society Cinema in Japantown.

This year’s highlights, a complete film schedule, and the festival trailer can all be found after the jump Read More…

Clown (Klovn)

Belguim’s movie version of the country’s popular episodic show of the same name has little to offer other than its resemblance of an extended road trip version of Curb Your Enthusiasm, only this seems to be directed by an 11-year-old boy fixated on shocking potty humor and wanting to replicate the closing photo montage of The Hangover.

The movie is scene after scene of two unlikable lead characters displaying lewd punchlines.  Having unlikable characters isn’t always a turnoff, in fact, there are a lot of films that focus on the antagonist that I love, but these characters in particular, Frank and Casper, were too uninterestingly juvenile for me to ever be invested in.

Those able to block out all the Curb Your Enthusiasm similarities and are looking to see something featuring a lot of child molestation humor might have a good time with this movie.  What else can I say – it wasn’t for me.  The only reason I’m giving this film two stars instead of one is because I now know what a shnozzle is and are looking forward to giving my fellow Filmbalayans one the next time I see them. Read More…

Before I start, I just want to say that I love Indie Fest. No matter what movie you watch, good or bad, you are going to see something you have never seen before. To me, that’s the most important thing a film festival can bring to the table.

Exley

The main premise of the film is a man, Exley, trying to make a quick $1000 to catch a cross country flight and visit his dying mother.  He travels through a surreal and shady world of criminals, weirdos, and scum who are all more unusual than the last.  The one thing they all have in common is that they are so annoying they transcended the world of the film to actually annoy me, the viewer.  Any time my thought process when referring to an annoying movie character goes from “that would be so annoying” to “that is so annoying” to me the movie has made a critical error.  I suppose an experimental film could use this technique to make a point, and Exley does have a certain experimental tinge to it, but any movie that has a clear narrative should not have characters that require multiple alcohol beverages in order to tolerate.  It’s also hard to get sucked into a movie that’s so visually unpleasant that it makes you want to break the DVD into splinters and then use them to gauge your eyes out.  This is an all to common and unfortunate side effect of micro-budget filmmaking that I just can’t overlook.  Add to this mix that I didn’t care what happened to the main character one way or another, and you get a film less appetizing than a lukewarm Hot Pocket.  Exley has an interesting plot but comes up short on the execution and presentation. Read More…

Girl Walk All Day

Indiefest’s closing night film is a 71 minute dance video set to the  sounds of that mighty maestro of mash-up music, Girl Talk.  Mash-up music, for those who don’t already know, is another level of audio sampling in where the artist manipulates already existing music to form a new song entirely.  Usually rap lyrics are involved, but not always.  Think of it as an audio collage.

This particular collage, impressively shot on digital, features a talented group of dancers traversing across the city, transforming Manhattan into their own stage.  Hair salons, malls, ferry boats, museums, Yankee Stadium, bridges, bodegas, statues, subways, graveyards, parks, and much more are all turned into a dance playground.

So, what does one get out of seeing an hour-long improvisational mashed-up music video?  How about a sense of overwhelming joy and assurance in all that is good with humanity.  Yeah, I took it there.  Loved this movie so much I even found myself smiling and bobbing my head along to the featured Beatles songs.  For me, that’s a big deal, because I’m not a big fan of The Beatles.  Actually, I’m barely a little fan of them.  Come to think of it, I don’t like them at all, yet, I enjoyed them in the context of this movie – go figure. Read More…

4:44 Last Day On Earth

How would you spend your last days on Earth if you knew the world was going to be destroyed in the morning?  That’s the premise in Abel Ferrara‘s (King of New York, Bad Lieutenant) claustrophobic new movie, starring Willem Dafoe and newcomer Shanyn Leigh in where the two play a Manhattan couple coming to terms with their final moments of existence.

Ferrara’s choice to shoot the majority of the film in one setting with a minimal amount of takes made me feel as if I were watching a play – not at all a bad thing, especially when the lead actor is Dafoe.  This play setting, along with the ‘sky is falling’ scenario practically begs for fueled performances to which both Dafoe and Leigh delivered.  The actors made the most of their surroundings and turned their emoting skills on high, only occasionally finding themselves being caught in fits of overacting.  This is where the movie falters, when the attention pays too much to the acting and not the scenario.  Still, the little bursts of over-the-top moments weren’t enough to detract me from the movie as a whole.

4:44 Last Day On Earth is a depressing way to kick off a film festival, yet not as depressing as kicking it off with a bad movie.  Fans of both doomsday scenarios and movies that show close-ups of Willem Dafoe’s pubic region should walk away eerily pleased from this one.

Read More…

The british are coming!  The british are coming!  Oh look, it’s not just the British, but the Irish, Australians, and South Africans are coming as well, and their armed with loaded canisters of film.  Let’s not fight them, people, lets come together and welcome them with our open cinematic hearts to the Vogue Theatre (3290 Sacramento Street) from February 2nd through the 9th.

This year’s lineup offers films both new and old.  While the newer films look interesting and feature a lot of things I find visually appealing in my movies i.e., Irish bare knuckle fighting (Knuckle), anything with Guy Pearce (33 Postcards), sport documentaries (Fire in Babylon), and revenge thrillers (Route Irish), it’s the older films that have really grabbed my attention.

This year the MBFF will be showing all 7 parts of the renown Seven Up documentary series, as well as a newly restored version of the 1926 silent doc, The Great White Silence.  While those films alone have me amped up for some series cinema watching, I’m even more excited for this year’s focus on directorial firsts.  Being that I am a big fan of director Nicholas Roeg‘s earlier work (The Man Who Fell To Earth, Don’t Look Now, Walkabout), I have no plans of missing a chance at seeing his 1970 debut, Performance.  Besides Roeg, some other director first films being screened are Stephen Frears‘ (High Fidelity, The Queen, Dangerous Liaisons) 1971 crime/comedy starring Albert Finney, Gumshoe, as well as Mike Figgis‘ (Leaving Las Vegas, Hotel, Internal Affairs) 1988 crime/drama starring Tommy Lee Jones, Sting, and Melanie Griffith, Stormy Monday.

Schedule, showtimes and ticket info can be found after the jump Read More…

What this festival lacks in quantity (only 5 films) it more than makes up for in quality, which makes the fact that this is the film’s last year even more disheartening.  I for one am truly grateful for being introduced to many fantastic German films over the past few years and this year is no exception.  Check out my mini guide to all the films playing at this year’s fest after the jump

The festival will be at The Castro Theatre on Saturday, January 14th and then move to the Arena Theater in Point Arena on Sunday, January 15th.  All five films will be shown at The Castro Theatre. Read More…

Preminger, Vidor, Sturges, Fuller, Dassin, Huston, plus Bogart!  Dashiell Hammett, Alan Ladd, and Gloria Grahame.  Name-dropping of this caliber can only mean one thing; It’s film noir time at the Castro Theatre.

It seems fitting that this year’s 10th annual Noir City Film Festival should run for 10 days.  From January 20th to the 29th the Castro Theatre will be once again feature an impressive line-up of some great noirtastic twists and turns with all the dialogue heavy banter we noir fans love.  Expect saucy vixens, fedora donning thugs, deceit, heartbreak, guns, cigarettes, and  melodrama.  Aside from the names mentioned at the top of the post, this year’s highlights also include a live on-stage interview with Angie Dickenson (The Killers, Point Blank, Dressed To Kill), a 1940s themed gala, and two versions of The Maltese Falcon.

Complete film schedule and ticket info after the jump Read More…