Film & Video
FLORIDA FILM FESTIVAL 2007 - REVIEWS
Editor's note: Movies that are marked with a 
symbol are our picks for the don't-miss highlights of the festival.
Air Guitar Nation
Too many documentaries get their energy from uncovering misdeeds and shining a light on injustice. Rare is the doc that exposes a subculture whose members, though odd, appear to be having fun on this increasingly sad planet. Everyone knows (or is) an air guitarist, but the existence of a world championship for invisible-ax players would be largely unthinkable. That the event is not only taken seriously by its contestants, but is also surprisingly devoid of irony, makes Air Guitar Nation excellently enjoyable. Tracking two rival U.S. air guitarists, C-Diddy and Bjorn Turoque, on their quest to be the first American entrants and ultimately the world champions, the film effectively gets itself past the intrinsic ridiculousness and winds up engaging us in the goings-on of the World Air Guitar Championships in Finland. It’s not the most thought-provoking doc at this year’s festival, but it will be one that sticks in your mind. (7:45 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
— Jason Ferguson
American Fork (not reviewed) The new outsider comedy from the producer of Napoleon Dynamite. (7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Regal; 4:30 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Enzian)
Analog Days This coming-of-age flick is stylish, but almost uncomfortably autobiographical. Still, first-time writer/director Mike Ott captures the textures of growing up in a small town with a nostalgia-free realism rarely achieved by more experienced filmmakers. His group of community-college drifters are bumping up against the painful realization that the mediocre will succeed, that politicians are corrupt, that your friends will outgrow you and disavow their erstwhile convictions. Analog Days doesn’t break new ground but treads its well-worn path with an awkward charm; if, in his next film, Ott can stretch beyond telling his own story, the results will be worth seeing. Indie-rock bona fides: Derek Fudesco of Pretty Girls Make Graves wrote some incidental music for the film, and rumor has it that mix tapes — yes, actual cassettes — will be handed out to attendees. (noon Sunday, March 25, at Regal; 9:30 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at Regal)
— Jessica Bryce Young
Away From Her Among the many entrants in this year’s festival that deal with mental illness, Away From Her is the most richly emotional, due, perhaps, to its source material. Based on the Alice Munro short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” Away From Her is about a smart, middle-aged Canadian couple dealing with the inevitable drift that occurs when a longtime partner loses touch with the reality of the past. Julie Christie plays Fiona, whose Alzheimer’s necessitates her admission into a senior-citizens facility. Her attentive, loving and somewhat penitent husband struggles mightily with the separation and with Fiona's eventual mental dissociation with him. That struggle, and his eventual, heroic coming to terms with the situation is as romantic as it is heartbreaking, and the delicate and dignified way that director Sarah Polley treats Munro’s story is worthy of high praise. (9 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, at Regal; 4:30 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
— Jason Ferguson
The Ballad of AJ Weberman Bob Dylan may not have liked the way he was initially portrayed in Factory Girl — after all, who wants to be incorrectly implicated in a murder? — but it’s possible St. Bob will get a chuckle out the way his assholishness is portrayed in The Ballad of AJ Weberman. You’d be grumpy too if there was an obsessive freak going through your garbage, yes? Weberman is the infamous New York City “Dylanologist” who gained a moment of notoriety in the late ’60s for using Dylan’s refuse as the basis for interpreting his works and, through several overstated encounters with the singer, was convinced he had gained real insight into his creative process. The Ballad is populated with a cast of rudderless Yippie freaks who, like Weberman, have been at a loss since the end of the ’60s. (How these people — including the original freak-folk singer, David Peel — manage to survive financially in modern-day New York is a complete mystery.) It’s those lost idealists, with their visions of Dylan’s “betrayal” and their tentative grip on reality that make this film captivating. (6 p.m. Friday, March 30, at Regal; 9 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Regal)
— JF
The Big Bad Swim As a metaphor for anxiety, you can hardly do better than a dozen nonswimmers confronting the deep end. This gentle, offbeat comedy about an adult swim class explores fear, grief and the loss of control without drowning in gloom, mostly due to the whip-smart performance of Paget Brewster as Amy, an acerbic calculus teacher whose marriage and job are on the rocks. Brewster’s spiky vulnerability is supported by her exquisite comic timing and 1940s-movie-star looks; she’s a wisecracking Roz Russell/Barbara Stanwyck–type caught in the wrong decade. The rest of the ensemble cast, particularly Heather Graham–clone Jess Weixler, deftly convey that, in the end, humans are buoyant. (2 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Regal; 9 p.m. Tuesday, March 27, at Regal)
— JBY
Big Night (not reviewed) Stanley Tucci’s award-winning 1996 Italian kitchen drama is a perfect fit for the festival’s Food & Wine Celebration. (11:45 a.m. Saturday, March 24, at Enzian)
Black Irish Haven’t we seen this movie a million times before? An Irish family struggles in South Boston. The dad’s a bully, the mom’s the bedrock, the older brother’s bad, the older sister gets knocked up and the little brother finds salvation through — wait for it — baseball. Engaging and well-crafted, but unoriginal. (7:15 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Regal; 1 p.m. Friday, March 30, at Enzian)
— JF
Bonnie and Clyde (not reviewed) Though the 1967 original received most viewers’ attention for its bloody ending, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway prove that even gun-toting psychopaths can be romantic. (9:45 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Enzian)
Born Again There’s a poignant story behind this documentary: A woman, raised in a Bible-thumping family, endures a huge amount of personal turmoil, discovers that she’s a lesbian and abandons the faith, much to the chagrin of her parents. The telling, however, is muddled. The biggest flaw is the correlation director/narrator Markie Hancock tries to make between the split in her family and the split in red-blue America. Though the premise is sound, the film’s execution is underdeveloped and ultimately detracts from the raw human emotion that should drive such intensely personal projects. (9 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Regal; 1:45 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at Enzian)
— Jeffrey C. Billman
The Bothersome Man
Bug-eyed protagonist Andreas has a good job, a comfortable apartment and a smokin’-hot girlfriend. The problem is, none of it is his. Like a character in a reality show, Andreas is quite suddenly plopped into a complete, picture-perfect world. While the idea of an existentialist Norwegian drama may seem the height of chin-stroking boredom, Bothersome finds copious amounts of dark, out-loud laughs in Andreas’ discomfort. The film is a great relationship-tester; if your significant other laughs along with you at Bothersome’s many funny moments, you know you’ve found a keeper. Why? Because the biggest laughs come from scenes like the one where Andreas accidentally chops his finger off and then tries to pretend like nothing happened. (7 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at Regal; 3:15 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
— JF
City of Baseball During World War II, the Italian city of Nettuno was turned on to the game of baseball by American GIs, and they haven’t turned loose of it yet. “If you speak of Nettuno, you’re speaking of baseball,” says one of the elderly aficionados who offer their opinions in this documentary. Nettuno is preternaturally obsessed with baseball, and City of Baseball attempts to express the city’s deep-rooted love for the game. An espresso machine in the dugout is as interesting to see as the Italian fans mimicking their American counterparts (the use of air horns, umpire-baiting, etc.), but the film — like the game it portrays — is a somnambulant one, occasionally punctuated by fascinating moments. (7 p.m. Monday, March 26, at Enzian)
— JF
Eagle vs. Shark (not reviewed) A video-game nerd (who’s known online as the Eagle Lord) and a fast-food cashier (who owns a shark costume) fall in love. (8 p.m. Friday, March 30, at Regal; 7:15 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Enzian)
The Elephant King One of two films in this year’s Florida Film Festival with a Big Star song on the soundtrack, “Take Care” (from Third, if you care) complements The Elephant King’s druggy, desperate tone, echoing the lives of the lovesick and loveless characters who inhabit the film. A nerdy, suicidal kid goes to Thailand to visit his depraved and thoroughly selfish brother to reconnect with him. The boys’ mother (Ellen Burstyn) hopes he’ll bring the wild child back from Thailand, as he’s living there on university grant money for a completely imaginary research project, and the university is none too happy about it. The young kid falls hopelessly in love with the city of Chiang Mai and a local showgirl and can do little to help his brother, who’s spiraling out of control. Director Seth Grossman (Shock Act) does a marvelous job at avoiding predictable directions, making The Elephant King a surprising and devastating film about family ties. (9:15 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Enzian; 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 27, at Regal)
— JF
Emile Norman: By His Own Design The cynic in me wants to think that the producers of this film — Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry, of L.A. Law fame — were hoping to goose the value of their personal art collection by making a documentary about Big Sur artist Emile Norman. It turns out, however, that Norman’s life as an artist and as a gay man in ’50s California proves to be substantial documentary fodder. It’s unfortunate that director Will Parrinello brings a snoozy, 60 Minutes–style to the material, as Norman’s struggles, victories and individualistic lifestyle are almost as intriguing as the work he created. (9 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Enzian; 2 p.m. Friday, March 30, at Regal)
— JF
Fido What do you get when you cross a zombie flick with a ’50s-set allegory about conformity and the military-industrial complex? One of the funniest movies in this year’s Florida Film Festival. The Zombie Wars have ended and, thanks to the revolutionary work done by a company called ZomCon, the United States has been separated into halcyon suburbs and “wild zones.” You can guess where the zombies live, but you’d be wrong. While “wild” zombies do roam freely outside the high fences of civilization, in those quaint neighborhoods, the lawns are mowed, the milk delivered and grunt work is done by zombies controlled by electro-shock collars built (and monitored) by ZomCon. You’d think that the sight gag of a zombie serving (and dropping) a roast or clumsily hurling a newspaper into the bushes would get old fast. But thanks to an enormously witty script that’s part Frankenstein, part Lassie episode, and strong comedic performances by Carrie-Anne Moss, Dylan Baker and Billy Connolly (as the titular zombie) as well as surprisingly high production values, Fido is genuinely and uniquely funny. (midnight Friday, March 30, at Regal; 9:30 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Regal)
— JF
Frank & Cindy
When Cindy married Frank in the early 1980s, she thought she was getting a sweet deal: He was cute, 17 years her junior and in a band whose single was climbing the charts. Too bad that band was OXO, and the inane “Whirly Girl” was their only hit. Over the next two decades, this has-been/never-was marriage deteriorated into mutual torment. Now Frank lives in the basement, coming upstairs only to procure more wine and empty the coffee cans he urinates in, and Cindy’s 28-year-old son GJ Echternkamp — still living at home — documents the carnage. “You’d be having an affair if you weren’t so fat!” screeches Cindy, the black-hole star of this low-rent Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? You can still see the party girl she once was; she’s striking even at 60 years old, with 17 missing teeth and a pill habit (really). Still, Frank may be alcoholic, dimwitted and self-deluded, but watching GJ and his mother fall about laughing at him while he grins confusedly feels like watching a bear-baiting. Echternkamp captures the kaleidoscopic nature of family interaction and exposes the less-than-admirable behavior of each player: Frank and Cindy’s, yes, but also his own. It’s raw, it’s riveting, it’s appalling and it’s disturbingly hilarious. (5 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Regal; 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, at Regal)
— Jessica Bryce Young
Full Grown Men Big Star song appearance alert No. 2! Too bad it’s in such an awful movie. Picking on those trapped in a stunted preadolescence — toy collectors, train builders, comic-book nerds — is as unfair as it is obvious, but the exaggerations that director David Munro employs to make action-figure geeks Alby and Elias seem ridiculous only make the characters overdrawn and unbelievable. (Why bother, when the real thing can be way stupider?) Co- produced by Alan Cumming, with appearances by Amy Sedaris and Debbie Harry, Full Grown Men finds the two 30-somethings responding to Alby’s prelife crisis by going to “Diggityland.” Hijinks ensue. (9:30 p.m. Friday, March 30, at Regal; 2 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Regal)
— JF
Funny Face (not reviewed) For the 50th anniversary of Stanley Donen’s classic film, Funny Face (yeah, the one with that Audrey Hepburn dance bit) gets an outdoor screening. (7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 27, at Central Park, Winter Park; free)
Glastonbury By piecing together professional, archival and home footage, Sex Pistols documentarian Julien Temple quilts this film about the world’s largest music festival. Due to the fertility of event material stretching back to 1970, there’s much to chew on — at a sprawling 138 minutes, perhaps too much. The film spans the festival experience, along with its history, philosophy, behind-the-scenes productions and live performances (including incendiary displays by Joe Strummer, Pulp and Björk, alongside footage of acts like Morrissey, Prodigy, Primal Scream, Billy Bragg, Cypress Hill, Scissor Sisters, Stereo MCs, Bowie and Babyshambles, among others). It clearly romanticizes the communal, primitive rite of the outdoor music festival, giving the doc a pleasant, loving hue. Its hazy attempts to echo Glastonbury’s insanity through nonlinear chronology and the glaring omission of titles identifying key characters (like festival creator Michael Eavis or anyone else, for that matter) sometimes render the film formless. The event’s vibrant essence is captured but lots of rich background narrative is suppressed. (9:30 p.m. Monday, March 26, at Enzian)
— Bao Le-Huu
The Glenmoore Job This made-for-Australian-TV crime drama may have been exceptional Down Under, but its claustrophobic production values, flat characters and slow pace add up to a reminder of why Americans love Dick Wolf. The inevitable twist that director Greg Williams finally throws in doesn’t do much to redeem the film. (4 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Regal; 1 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
— JF
Heavens Fall If you ignore the outsized accents (both Southern and New York Jewish) employed by the central characters and put aside the weariness you feel for period pieces that make this country’s racist past seem quaintly historic, Heavens Fall emerges as a winning courtroom drama whose grasp exceeds its reach. Writer-director Terry Green attempts to humanize the stuck-in-the-1800s mindset of the state’s attorney and judge in charge of the trial of nine young African-American men (the “Scottsboro boys”) wrongly accused of raping a girl on a train. He does so by having the officials “get along” with Samuel Liebowitz, the noted New York defense attorney who took on the boys’ case. The real drama here is the trial itself. The outcome is no surprise, but the diligent and brilliant legal work Liebowitz does on behalf of the accused is the movie’s heartwarming strength. (9:15 p.m. Monday, March 26, at Regal; 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at Regal)
— JF
Her Best Move (not reviewed) A 15-year-old girl soccer prodigy — who’s blond and cute as a button — has a chance to make the U.S. National team. Will homework or (gulp) boys keep her from her ball-playing dreams? One can only hope. (11:30 a.m. Saturday, March 31, at Regal)
If It Ain’t Stiff It Ain’t Worth a F...: The Stiff Records Story You have to love any movie that refers to Elvis Costello as “D.P. Costello: Pub Rocker.” A documentary on seminal punk-rock label Stiff, If It Ain’t Stiff does a worthy job of capturing the early energy and pre-Pistols roots of London punk — the emphasis in the Stiff scene was on pub rock. The doc also focuses on how integral Nick Lowe (more so than Costello) was to the label’s early success. The edited footage is overlong; it gets all the way up to the Damned’s first album, gloriously showing a clip of the video for “New Rose,” within the first half-hour, then spends the next 60 minutes trying to pretend that what came afterward was worth documenting. Costello comes off as quite human, especially in his rivalry with labelmate Ian Dury. Best line: Jerry Casale of Devo calling the guys at Stiff “pigs in hippie clothes.” (10 p.m. Friday, March 30, at Regal; free)
— JF
In the Shadow of the Moon (not reviewed) This documentary on the Apollo space program offers previously unseen NASA archival footage and interviews with all the surviving crew members — in other words, interviews with everyone on Earth who ever walked on the moon. (7 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Regal; noon Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
Kamp Katrina Powerful documentaries on post-Katrina New Orleans aren’t too hard to find; with raw human drama inhabiting every corner of the city, only the most thick-skulled filmmaker could fail to produce a poignant portrait. That said, this DV-shot film captures an exceptionally pathos-rich tale. After the storm, in the absence of institutional assistance, grass-roots aid efforts cropped up all over, but the camp set up in one woman’s backyard as a haven for some of the crazy city’s craziest inhabitants — drug addicts, transients, the mentally ill — suffered far more than just governmental neglect. The personal dramas and tense struggles of the residents are moving, but the hostility they face from the powers-that-be is saddening in its bureaucratic predictability. (noon Saturday, March 24, at Regal; 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 27, at Enzian)
— JF
The King of Kong (not reviewed) A slightly crazy and generally unlikable fellow tries to break the world-record score for Donkey Kong. (5:30 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
Knee Deep I seriously doubted that Knee Deep was a for-real documentary; one would think that a guy in small-town Maine who attempted to murder his mom after she sold the dairy farm he was set to inherit would turn up in a Google search or two — but it didn’t. Plus, the mundane absurdity of the entire situation smacks of a film student’s “good idea.” Nonetheless, Knee Deep has been vouched for as a for-real doc, which makes it slightly less appealing. When Josh Osborne’s small, rural world is turned upside-down by his mother’s decision, it’s hard not to sympathize with him, as he literally knows nothing else besides farm work. Still, footage of milking cows and slopping shit doesn’t make for much of a movie, no matter how deadly the stakes. (2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Regal; 9:15 p.m. Tuesday, March 27, at Enzian)
— JF
The Lather Effect (not reviewed) it’s described repeatedly as a “Gen-X Big Chill”; who are we to argue? With Eric Stoltz and Ione Skye. (7 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Regal; 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, at Enzian)
Live Free or Die Smart, daring and funny, Live Free or Die centers around the pathetic, fraudulent existence of John Rudgate, a jobless sad sack in a small New Hampshire town. Rudgate desperately wants people to believe he’s a badass who decapitated a logger who crossed him and that he’s something of an all-around menace. In reality, he’s nothing of the sort, spending his time peeling rebate coupons from liquor bottles and subsisting on the meager checks that come his way. No one believes him except a borderline-retarded high-school friend who buys into everything Rudgate says. His false bravado and constant need for attention finally land him in legal hot water and render him a choice: Admit to being a loser or waste his life to keep up the act for his one dimwitted friend. Well-scripted and acted, the film breezes through its 92 minutes and is only slightly overwhelmed by Michael Rapaport’s portrayal of a cop obsessed with his wife’s presumed adultery. (9:30 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Regal; 3:45 p.m. Friday, March 30, at Enzian)
— JCB
Madeinusa
Even the best-intended projects, when left unsupervised, can yield extraordinarily unintended results. One would expect that the Catholic missionaries who once blanketed Latin America with their belief system returned to their European homes content that their converts would carry on the canonical traditions that define the Church. That isn’t the case in the isolated Peruvian village that serves as the backdrop for Madeinusa. In this village, rich in the prevalence and reverence of images of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, it seems that a few details got lost in translation. Madeinusa takes place over an Easter weekend, when the village acknowledges the temporary “death of God” in that brief span of time between Christ’s execution on the afternoon of Good Friday and his resurrection Sunday morning. A dead God is an unseeing, unknowing God, so for these people, in those 39 hours, the concept of sin is set aside, because who’s going to know? Debauchery in all forms and levels of excess takes place, observed in disbelief by a handsome traveler from Lima who can comprehend neither the madness nor the willful participation of the innocent and beautiful Madeinusa (pronounced mahd-en-oosa). Madeinusa’s likeness to the Virgin and her relationship with the mayor make for the story’s central and unsettling conflict, but the film’s arched-eyebrow study of rural Catholic insanity is what makes it compelling. (3:45 p.m. Friday, March 30, at Regal; 6:30 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Regal)
— JF
Marilena de la P7 Spin a globe and pick any spot to find, as sure as the sun shines, a place where teen boys think about sex. The dingy P7 ghetto of Romania is no different, and in this competition film it’s where ballsy 13-year-old Andrei is fired to red-hot by his fascination with the prostitutes in the neighborhood’s red-light district and particularly by the beautiful Marilena. Both of them are poor and ambitious in their right, and the hard-luck match-up is not made in heaven. Still, no matter the street ethos, we can’t help but feel the pain of the explosion of his innocence, as heartache is as ageless as hard-ons. (4 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Regal; 1 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
— Lindy T. Shepherd
Men at Work Based on an idea by famed Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami (Taste of Cherry), Men at Work’s plot is small and simple: Four middle-aged guys on a road trip take a bathroom break on the side of the road, find an unusual rock on the edge of a cliff and attempt to push it over. Thick with humor and allegory (there’s a reason that the rock is phallic), Men at Work is much less simple than its plot, and when writer-director Mani Haghighi gets the men down to their basic impulses, the film really takes off. (7:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, at Regal; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
— JF
Mondo Intro/My Day in (Fake TV) Court Here’s a coupling in which the short should be the feature and the feature should be the short. Mondo Intro is a maddeningly long collection of “talking head clips” from the 1950s. Note: It’s neither witty nor original to poke fun at plastics commercials and Cold War fear-mongering. Mondo Intro wears out its welcome almost immediately. My Day in (Fake TV) Court, on the other hand, could be twice as long and still keep your attention. In it, a professional “infiltrator” pulls one over on Judge Joe Brown’s producers, managing to get his entirely made-up “case” on the air. The case itself is a salacious doozy — something about hiring strippers for a bachelor party who turn out to be female impersonators — which, obviously, interests the show’s producers even more. My Day makes some rather unsubtle comments about the guileless trashiness of daytime television, but succeeds primarily as a piss-taking comedy. (midnight Friday, March 30, at Enzian)
— JF
Murder Party (not reviewed) The title tells all in this horror-comedy about a Halloween costume party that turns out to be something far more sinister and ridiculous. (midnight Saturday, March 31, at Enzian; 9:30 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa The synopsis of Off the Grid sets up the documentary as a rare glimpse into a community of misfits who call home a waterless wasteland on 15 square miles in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico; it conjures a right-to-bear-arms, Wild West existence not for the faint of heart. The footage itself, however, captured something less glamorous and more disturbing: Here’s at least one place where the lost and damaged in our society self-conscript themselves in order to live with a semblance of freedom and peace — “patriots” was how many referred to themselves. Among the 300 inhabitants, we meet veterans of wars, Vietnam and Gulf, who carry the poison of post-traumatic stress disorder as well as cancerous tumors from biological weapons. Wandering in this odd mix is a teen runaway, a victim of a heroin-addicted mother; the girl is strung out on crystal meth and by the film’s close has a belly full of baby and an empty bag of coping skills. A potentially violent crisis occurs when the Nowhere Kids, a pack of gun-toting vegans with a conflicting civil code, take up residence: Stealing whatever they want is not a crime to them; rather, it’s a natural consequence of “hoarding.” The diplomacy of the “Mamas,” the women of the community, is called upon to broker a solution before the men pull out their own impressive firepower. Off the Grid is a scary foreshadowing of where and how our country’s disenchanted are finding solace. (6:15 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Enzian; 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, at Regal)
— LTS
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience Commis-sioned by the NEA, the Operation Homecoming project sent authors to military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan for workshops designed to help the troops commit their experiences to paper. This film puts those words on the screen in a series of pieces that vary wildly in style. Poetic and engaging due to the multiple visual approaches employed — the photo montages and animated segments succeed in capturing the often-otherworldly visions penned by the soldiers — Operation Homecoming the film is notably emotional. What comes as something of a shock, however, is how frequently the soldiers turn to humor to muddle their way through. While it may feel to uncomfortable laugh at these struggling soldiers’ experiences, the purity and effectiveness of their words is resoundingly amplified by these sensitive cinematic interpretations. (12:30 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Regal; 4:15 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at Enzian)
— JF
Paprika (not reviewed) An animated Japanese science-fiction film directed by Satoshi Kon and based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel of the same name. (2 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Regal)
The Path of Most Resistance
This 40-minute film starts out like a pointless relationship drama but winds up altogether different — and much more intriguing. Director Peter Kelley (Sporting Dog) drops in on the nebbishy and secretive Tom on New Year’s Eve. The poor guy’s heartbroken over the dissolution of his last relationship, but unwilling to abandon the career that caused the breakup. Investment banker? Impassioned artist? How about a high-stakes cat burglar? Seriously. The casting of Tim Rouhana as Tom was a masterstroke, as the actor’s looks are reminiscent of Cary Grant in Charade. (He’s not as handsome but appears equally unlikely to be a criminal.) Tom is an ethical robber, only stealing “the most valuable item” in the house of his obscenely rich victims, which adds to his charm. Naturally, this particular New Year’s Eve job goes awry in a thoroughly unpredictable way, as Tom encounters Prudence (Spencer Grammer), the deeply nutty daughter of the homeowner he’s stealing from. A comedy of toilet-tank lids, duct tape and the Beatles follows, but Kelley does an exceptional job of keeping the humor darkly absurd, rather than knee-slappingly stupid. (part of Shorts Program 1: Personality Crisis; 11:30 a.m. Saturday, March 24, at Regal; 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 27, at Regal)
— JF
Pretty in the Face Suffering from an overcooked story and dull cinematography, Pretty in the Face should nonetheless be applauded for its brave concept. Maggie, a dowdy girl in a static relationship, works at a pottery studio owned by her boyfriend’s obese sister. Said boyfriend also happens to be the soccer coach for his sister’s equally obese son. Said boyfriend also happens to be something of an adulterous shit-heel. Director Nate Meyer does a fantastic (though probably unintentional) job of making every one of these characters unsympathetic. So when Maggie and the fat kid start, uh, spending time together, it’s fairly easy to see where everything is going. The cringe factor for Pretty in the Face is high, but that’s not a positive here as Meyer’s execution is lacking. (9 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Regal; 4:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, at Enzian)
— JF
Row Hard, No Excuses If you’ve ever had a dream — an impossible goal you wanted to achieve — here’s a film to put you off it. Americans John Zeigler and Tom Mailhot prepared for three years to enter the Atlantic Rowing Race, a 3,000-mile row-boat course from the Canary Islands to Barbados. They risked their lives, they put their futures on hold, they went into debt, they got nasty rashes on their asses, they endured storms and in the end, they made it. But Zeigler and Mailhot are competitors. They wanted to win, and didn’t. What did they find at the other side of a couple million strokes of the oars? An empty feeling and no answers as to why they were driven to the extreme task in the first place. The film itself is a triumph. Shot mostly by the racing crews, it is a testimony to the vast loneliness of the ocean and the mental fortitude it takes to cross it. Seeing people at their lowest ebb is enlightening and frightening. (7 p.m. Monday, March 26, at Regal; 9:30 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at Enzian)
— Bob Whitby
A Season of Madness
When you’re eating onions to keep your wits about you and to keep your husband off you, then your life has taken a turn for the worse. Based on the story by Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh, A Season of Madness is only 17 minutes long, but it elegantly captures the crushing despair that’s felt when trapped in a worthless marriage. Empty bromides and disapproving looks from her mother-in-law (Madhur Jaffrey) do little to keep Fatin (Marjan Neshat) from becoming lost in nostalgic remembrances of true love, a mental habit that pushes her over the edge. While her husband is portrayed as worse-than-perfect but better-than-evil, Fatin’s emotional world gets smaller and smaller until she’s faced with only two ugly options. Beautifully shot and sensitively acted, this elegiac story is rendered note-perfect by writer/director Katja Esson. (part of Shorts Program 4: What Goes On; 1 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Enzian; 9 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at Regal)
— JF
Severance
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meeting for Severance when the phrase “It’s like The Office meets Sleepaway Camp” issued forth from someone’s mouth. While perfectly accurate, such a description — and it’s the only apt one — doesn’t evoke the ringing of box-office cash registers. But who would have thought a zombie movie, “but really wry,” like Shaun of the Dead would be so successful? Severance takes several cues from Shaun, from its cutting British humor to its cutting of limbs. The injection of office politics and middle-management phraseology, such as “team-building exercises,” into a blood-drenched slasher flick is novel enough to make Severance stand out. Add a backstory that defines New World Order defense contractors such as Halliburton as the root of all evil, and you’ve got a winner. (midnight Saturday, March 24, at Regal)
— JF
Snow Cake Two actresses make multiple appearances in this Florida Film Festival lineup, and they’re both in Snow Cake. Sigourney Weaver (also in The TV Set) portrays a “high-functioning” and “very verbal” autistic mom who’s confronted with the news that her daughter died in an automobile accident. Carrie-Anne Moss (also in Fido) is the “selfish” (and slutty) next-door neighbor. While Weaver’s performance is marvelous (and Moss’ … meh), it’s Alan Rickman — as the baggage-laden, shell-shocked driver of the car Weaver’s vivacious daughter was riding in — whose generally stunned performance drives the movie. As Rickman ingratiates himself with both women (he’s as much of an outsider as they are), he’s notably drawn into the thoroughly bizarre lives they lead in a thoroughly mundane North Canadian town. Despite the ominous overhang of death, isolation and mental illness, Snow Cake never entertains too much pathos nor does it become overly concerned with making Weaver’s character even slightly sympathetic; her uncensored forthrightness is as refreshingly humane as it is hilarious. (9:30 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Regal; 7 p.m. Sunday, April 1, at Regal)
— JF
Son of a Bitch It takes guts to call a movie about your mom “Son of a Bitch,” and while director Jon Ezrine is obviously in need of therapy beyond the cinematic sort, it’s unfortunate that his portrait of his racist, nutty Miami Beach mom and his equally off-base siblings comes off as so ... normal. Maybe it’s the South Florida backdrop that cushions the familial strangeness, but even when Ezrine’s mother is destroying all of her relationships except for her “smart for a Cuban” doctor, it’s hard to be surprised. The old saying that all families are screwed up in their own way rings true here: Ezrine thought his family was especially strange, but in Son of a Bitch their potentially notable poison isn’t much more than narcissistic unpleasantness. (6:30 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Enzian; 4:15 p.m. Friday, March 30, at Regal)
— JF
Speed Dating The television-style production quality and thinly drawn characters of Speed Dating combine to undercut a novel premise. A young bajillionaire can’t get a date and winds up obsessively attending speed-dating sessions. James is good-hearted, heartbroken and completely incompetent relationship-wise. His propensity for telling bald-faced lies to potential paramours is only the beginning of his problems; his leeching friends, out-to-lunch parents and thoroughly cynical therapist don’t do much to help. James’ speed-dating forays are ripe ground for sharp comedy, but writer/director Tony Herbert went for broad ridiculousness instead, which makes James far less sympathetic than he should be. The film is little more than a pleasant diversion. (6:30 p.m. Monday, March 26, at Regal; 7 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Enzian)
— JF
The Strand
Blair Witch director Daniel Myrick finally answers the “What’s he gonna do next?” question with something completely unexpected. The Strand is a densely populated, intertwined drama that, like Crash, finds the lives of various Los Angelenos meeting at unforeseen junctures. Unlike Crash, however, the characters in The Strand are interesting and their stories aren’t as portentous or pretentious. An ancient and pleasantly delusional Hollywood belle (Katherine Helmond), a struggling screenwriter, obnoxious yuppies, surfers, artists, street people, con men and a conniving new arrival from the Midwest get stirred into Myrick’s Venice Beach pot. Forgive the relatively amateur acting and DV-quality cinematography and The Strand rumbles purposefully to its multiple/singular resolutions, with Kevin Smith somehow involved. (Whether this is a nod or a wink is never made clear.) Some scenes — a ridiculous mini-motorcycle chase through the beachfront streets — are less graceful than others, but the perversely satisfying ending shows that Myrick hasn’t lost his touch as a deliverer of the unexpected. (4:30 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at Regal; 9:45 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, at Enzian)
Swedish Auto
Highly original without getting bogged down in quirk, Swedish Auto is a slowly unfolding romance about two issues-laden loners who each happen to have a penchant for voyeuristic stalking. Director Derek Sieg doesn’t let the story get ahead of itself, and as we see Carter toiling away at his car-repair job and Darla making her way through her days as a diner waitress, they are unremarkable. Once the elegantly paced exposition and Sieg’s economical use of dialogue captures the tentative weirdness of the two, and by the time the viewer realizes the dysfunction of this couple, it’s too late to hold it against them. Shooting in Charlottesville, Va., Sieg makes the college city feel like a glacial small town, which provides a suitable backdrop for this marvelously engaging story. (6:30 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Regal; 4:15 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at Regal)
— JF
The TV Set David Duchovny, Justine Bateman, Ioan Gruffudd and Sigourney Weaver (also in Snow Cake) star in this biting look at the creatively draining world of TV sitcom production. Duchovny is a passionate writer who is essentially in the wrong business. He watches in near helplessness as a show he penned is turned from a sharp, emotionally resonant comedy into pointless, broad pabulum by suits like Weaver’s delightfully awful network exec. A bearded Duchovny emerges as a surprisingly likable guy who, in true Hollywood style, is not averse to manipulative backstabbing when called for; from the moment the goofy and inept Zach gets cast as his lead, it’s clear it’s not going to be an easy ride for him. Directed by Orange County’s Jake Kasdan. (opening-night film, 7 p.m. Friday, March 23, at Enzian; also 9:30 p.m. Saturday, March 31, at Enzian)
— JF
Unsettled “There’s no enemy, there’s no victory,” says the military commander leading exercises at the beginning of Unsettled, and she’s right. The Israeli army is preparing to mobilize an evacuation of the West Bank and Gaza, removing Israeli citizens who have been ordered to vacate their outpost settlements. This real-life drama has been covered before, and countless docs have highlighted the personal turmoil that defines the human aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Unsettled excels where many others have failed: The film draws complete pictures of the people on both sides of the debate — the surfer dude who doesn’t want to leave, the mother of a soldier, the protest-ready “religious filmmaker.” In doing so, the film underscores the reality that there are no winners when fellow citizens are fighting one another — the Palestinians are conspicuously absent in Unsettled. The views held by each individual are so strong that it becomes impossible to take sides. By emphasizing the sheer inconclusiveness of the struggle, director Adam Hootnick has crafted a dramatic, sensitive and often quite funny picture of a dire situation. (8:30 p.m. Monday, March 26, at Regal; 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 28, at Regal)
— JF
The Valet (not reviewed) A French mistaken-identity comedy about a valet who gets caught up in the troubles of a high-powered executive. Directed by Francis Veber. (7 p.m. Thursday, March 29, at Enzian)
When Pigs Fly
There’s no way to pretty up this bizarre picture by husband-and-wife documentary filmmakers Eric Breitenbach (My Father’s Son, 2002) and Phyllis Redman of Daytona Beach. There are two upbeat components to this tragic story about a Lory Yazurlo, a fiercely independent woman left a quadriplegic after an accident in an 18-wheeler, who lives and works at her own pig sanctuary in Bunnell, Fla., on a 20-acre settlement from CSX. The first is Yazurlo’s mother, a salt-of-the-earth farm wife who may not like her wheelchair-bound girl’s filthy obsession but supports and honors her right to choose her own life, even as her daughter’s mental health deteriorates. The second is the soundtrack by local country songstress Terri Binion, whose voice and music raise the essence of this story out of the muck and into the realm of freedom for all. (3:45 p.m. Sunday, March 25, at Enzian)
— Lindy T. Shepherd
Show times and lineups sometimes change, so we recommend checking the Florida Film Festival website for updated info: www.floridafilmfestival.com.
