Hello! Too much great stuff today!
I really loved Wild Field:
There’s not a lot of action on the Kazakh steppe—one of the driest, bleakest, biggest place on earth—but somehow Wild Field wrings terror, humor, and beauty from the uneasy boredom of the landscape.
Jen Graves highly recommends The Strength of Water:
Two 10-year-old Maori twins (a boy and a girl) deliver eggs for their hardworking parents every day, all over town. The landscape is what you notice, not the kids: the natural wealth of the dramatic New Zealand coastline, the relative material poverty of the people living there. You also notice the fascinating Maori traditions and language: the men touching noses as a greeting, the songs, the people who live in the mist. And then a freak accident interrupts the reverie, and the characters find themselves wrapped in a mist of grief. The details are subtle and honorable.
And Aaron Moncivaiz says Fig Trees is a definite Don’t Miss:
A dense, postmodern, operatic documentary focusing mainly on the stories of two AIDS activists, Fig Trees is at once informative and artful.
David Schmader luuurved We Live in Public (umm, yes, that pic is from Sunset Boulevard—sorry, will fix):
Following her award-winning indie-rock chronicle Dig!, documentarian Ondi Timoner turns to another world-class freak show: Josh Harris, the internet artist/entrepreneur who from the mid-‘90s to the early-oughts created several visionary web projects that effectively predicted our surveillance-soaked world. Along the way, he went all kinds of crazy, and Timoner’s film sums up the man and his work brilliantly, in a documentary that’s part thriller, part art-history lesson, and totally amazing. (Winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize.)
Paper Heart, comedian Charlyne Yi’s faux-documentary (she travels the country interviewing people about love, possibly falling in love with Michael Cera along the way), teeters on the brink of waaay-too-cute, but manages to be just regular cute. I liked it quite a bit.
There are so many great things playing today, I don’t have time to write about them all. But in brief: If you missed Trimpin: The Sound of Invention yesterday, you have another chance today. Ditto Nurse.Fighter.Boy. Ditto ditto The Yes Men Fix the World. Seattle finally gets a chance to see local filmmaker David Russo’s The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle, which screened at this year’s Sundance. In archivals today, you’ve got the obviously great Sunset Boulevard (wrong picture again! sorry!). Tonight’s midnight movie at the Egyptian is the long-awaited Norwegian Nazi/zombie flick Dead Snow.
And you guys, I know Spring Breakdown is tempting, but I’d avoid it. The thing got STANKY reviews.
Search all of our SIFF reviews, with recommendations and movie times, HERE. Have fun!
Uh, Spring Breakdown was actually terrific last night. And it probably will be again today unless you loathe hilarious comedy of the broad, physical sort.
Spring Breakdown had more funny moments than I expected, but it’s still hard to recommend to the average moviegoer. If you’re an Amy Poehler and/or Rachel Dratch fan, you’ll like it. Parker Posey is a bit wasted. And there were almost too many loud bar scenes. And it’s a good type of “light” (yet loud) movie that’s a good break from countless foreign angst films (although we’re not really at that point yet in siff). And I think it comes out on dvd in a week or so. Beyond that, it was some stupid fun that made me laugh.
i LOVED Spring Breakdown. It was smart underneath the broadness. A strong message with a refreshing 3 lady lead instead of the rehash of the boy comedy. Hilarious, and sweet.