TROLLHUNTER: trolls are really big

TROLLHUNTER is a fun mockumentory monster movie made in Norway. It is in the style of CLOVERFIELD, but more of a comedy (it is about Trolls after all) and much less trendy. The story is that three film students set out to bust a bear poacher. The man is Hans, not a bear poacher but a Trollhunter working for the government to cover up trolls existence. Of course, the students get a troll on film, while running from it, and team up with the hunter to get more footage, despite government officials warning them and him it's a bad idea.
Every scene is footage the students are getting on camera as they follow this hunter and capture several dangerous killings on tape. There isn't any really scary scenes, but the closest to that is the first night they follow the hunter out into the woods and first see a troll, because it has a long scene of them hiking around the trees in the dark just hearing creepy noises. That always gets me tense because I am just waiting for something to jump out. Of course, these Trolls don't really jump out at you, they smash through the trees and step on you.

I learned many things about Trolls from this movie.
1. They are allergic to sunlight.
2. They smell the blood of Christians and then go after them.
3. They like to eat tires.
4. They sprout additional heads as they get older.
5. They are really really big!

The viewing experience was a lot of fun. The audience was pumped up for the movie and cheered a lot, and since it is all subtitled the poor sound quality in the theater (Neptune, not so good) didn't affect it negatively. The Troll effects were pretty good. I liked the look they gave them, and the green countryside backdrop is nice. The characters are pretty transparent, with the exception of Hans, who is wonderfully grizzled and his growing disdain for the government that controls him gives the film its only real character development.
I liked the movie. It is a lot of fun. Beyond that, I pretty much thought it was silly fluff.

FUCK MY LIFE: Chili's sex comedy

FUCK MY LIFE would fit in perfectly with movies like FORGETTING SARAH MARSHAL and THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN. It was the number one movie in Chili last year and I read they are already filming the sequel.
It is a fairly funny comedy about Javier, a young man who breaks up with his girl friend and then wants her back when she starts dating a famous pop star. Around this time he looses his job in advertising, looses all his friends (all but his childhood gal pal) and develops a serious drinking problem. The bulk of the movie is Javier either harassing his ex or dating several crazy women.
The young cast is very attractive (although Javier is more "normal" looking and all the women are hot) and many of the scenes are pretty funny. The two highlights for me were, a date with a supermodel who is listing all the things she hates and one of them is "people with down syndrom". Later Javier goes out drinking with a male bartender who tries to force him to play his favorite game from his prison days "Hide it in the Mouth".Those two jokes give an idea of the sort of humor FUCK MY LIFE consists of. On track with the American comedies of late.
I don't have a whole lot else to say about the movie. The subtitles were rather weak, some things characters said were clearly translated wrong, so I do wonder how many things that didn't make me laugh were simply lost in translation.
The two areas that annoyed me were the large amount of fat jokes, only targeted at women and so much that it seemed very much like overkill. The other thing was Javier's stalker tendencies with his ex. In certain scenes I felt he went beyond just pathetic drunk loser who can't leave her alone, to somewhat threatening of her. In one scene she is in a car with him and he tries to kiss her, when she pulls away he grabs her by the shoulders and forces her face to him and seems to be tearing at her top, but a cop knocks on the window and he stops.
My reaction was somewhat shocked that our leading man would behave that terribly, but the movie moves along like this is no big deal, as if him being drunk and crying outside her window for days is pretty much the same thing as tearing at her clothes while she fights him off.
I would say if you are a fan of THE HANGOVER and those types of films, FUCK MY LIFE is worth checking out. It has some funny parts and its fun to see the Chili take on gross out/sex humor.

CIRCUMSTANCE

I wanted to like CIRCUMSTANCE a lot. I had first read about the film when one of my favorite magazines, Nylon, did a write up on the two female leads. They made the movie sound interesting and it is about subject matter I find interesting and important. Also, CIRCUMSTANCE is directed by a women, which is something I seek out in SIFF films. The director, Maryam Keshavarz, is also the writer and based it on her experiences growing up. Unfortunately my high expectations may have made it harder for me to enjoy this well-made, but still flawed film.

The story follows Atafeh and Shireen, two young women going to school in modern day Iran. Atafeh is from a wealthy and liberal family, her father is a graduate of Berkeley and he has a loving relationship with his daughter and wife. Shireen comes from an educated but less fortunate family. Her parents are not in the film, we know they were professors accused of being traitors and are, perhapes, dead. 

Atafeh takes Shireen into her world, bringing her on a family trip to the ocean, where the famles sit in their head scarves and long dresses while the men swim and lounge in small swim trunks. The girls also explore Tehran's underground scene of music, drugs and dancing. As their strong friendship grows so do their feelings and they become secret lovers. Trouble begins to brew when Atafeh's brother returns home after being in and out of rehab for drug addictions. He is very troubled and filled with anger. His anger drives him to join the Morality Police and soon he begins spying on his own family with cameras he places around their house. This leads to him following his sister and her friend and they are arrested by the Morality Police while driving home from an underground party. They are taken in, given a virginity test (which Atafeh fails) and then held until a high bail is paid. 

My biggest frustration with CIRCUMSTANCE was my desire for the filmmaker to more deeply explore the political issues in the film. I felt it was somewhat scattered at times, and introduced so many issues that it couldn't fully flesh them all out, and it left me wanting to better understand where the characters were coming from. For example, in one scene Shireen is riding in a car with a man who pulls over and demands she give her naked foot or he will deliver her to the police. Shireen has no choice but to hold back her revulsion as he moans and gropes her foot while playing with himself. This scene well represents the convoluted struggle of the hostility that men have in a sexually oppressive society when they desire a women.  But immediately following that scene Shireen is seen in a club, wearing a sexy outfit, wasted and making out with boys we have never seen before and she is without Atafeh, whom up until this point has been the one paying for their drugs, drinks and giving Shireen her outfits. I understood her state was a result of Shireen feeling violated but it made little sense how she suddenly had access to this world without her rich friend. 

I found the class difference between the girls to be one of the most rich elements to the story of these girls oppression. It is clear Atafeh has a safety net with her rich liberal father, and Shireen only has her very conservative Uncle who wants to marry her off in a hurry. But I felt Keshavarz pulled away from this issue at the end of the film, favoring dramatic emotional scenes of both girls crying, kissing, and fighting but lacking a deeper connection to how much their differences are because of Shireen's powerlessness. 

The cinematography is beautiful in CIRCUMSTANCE, as are both female leads. Many beautiful images of them laying next to each other, or standing in the wind with their head scarves blowing around their faces fill CIRCUMSTANCE, making it lush and sexy. I just felt at times the film was dealing with so many serious and fascinating political issues that got lost in all the scenes of how beautiful the two females are. The final third was weakest part of the film, because it has the most dramatic moments but at the same time felt the most removed from the characters. The end left me unclear as to what was driving them to make their individual choices. 

    

WITHOUT: SIFF gem

WITHOUT is the first film from writer/director Mark Jackson and it is a strong debut. The entire movie is shot on Whidbey island, it both opens and closes on the ferry. It is the story of 19 year old Joslyn , who is spending one week caring for an old man while his family travels. Josyln must feed, change and wash this man, who doesn't speak and occasionally moans at night. His home is in the middle of the woods and has no internet connection. This seclusion affects Joslyn, whom, we learn, was struggling with both loss and isolation long before coming to this house.

The first half of WITHOUT is mostly watching Joslyn take care of the old man and do yoga. The second half of the film is watching Joslyn unravel. Jackson introduces several mysteries that imply dark forces are at work. Joslyn seems surprised when she discovers a large bruise on her back. Every night she places her cell phone next to her bed, and every morning it is someplace else in the house. The film is slow paced but builds in creepy tension as Joslyn's isolation makes her desperate for human connection and causes her to act out, sexually and violently, towards the old man.
In WITHOUT the directing, cinematography and acting are all wonderful, and the movie belongs to newcomer Joslyn Jenson, who is in almost every shot and captures the severely repressed young women with a naturalness that carries the film through long scenes of little action.
WITHOUT ends without answering all the questions it raises, which bothered many viewers, but I enjoy open-ended films when done well, as this one is. I have several theories, and I look forward to discussing them with people who have seen WITHOUT. The movie stays with me, haunts me, because without everything answered the story is not over. 

LOVE: very void of emotion

I am still trying to understand what the full concept for LOVE was. 

The main storyline is simple enough: man in solo space station loses connection to Earth and begins to unravel as years pass and he remains in complete solitude; but I did not understand very much about the execution of this story. 

First off, this movie began to take form almost five years ago when the band Angels and Airwaves asked director William Eubank to make a film inspired by their music. As Eubank began working on a script that was music driven, not plot, he began to expand on it more until it became a feature length more complex then what he had began. Eubank basically spent the next four years building a space station set in his parent’s driveway with supplies he purchased at Home Depot. Considering the low budget the set does look impressive and I was amazed when I heard the director talking about the creative ways he made the set. Still, a well made set fails to make up for a weak script.

I would say that LOVE fails on every level. It opens with a Civil War segment that did not seem connected to the rest of the film. Neither did the four random interviews of men talking rather broadly about their feelings of isolation placed throughout the film. The movie seems to suggest these are archival footage, remaining fragments of the, perhaps, extinct Earth population, but I failed to find any value in them. Instead they fell flat and confused me. 

The score is fine, but not particularly exciting.  Considering the band's music was the inspiration for this film I had expected much more of a musical heavy, eye candy type of art film, but there are hardly any segments in the film put to music. It is almost always background, playing subtly in the back while our star spaceman pushes buttons and looks worried in his small station.

 At no time in this movie did I feel the theme of isolation was explored intelligently. Since we never see our lead have any kind of human interaction it is hard to understand what was lost for him when all communication ended.  I would have found it much more interesting if the entire movie had been just him, in his space station, slowly losing it. Maybe then the audience could have experienced his feelings of isolation, if we too were forced to endure the claustrophobia of his lonely destiny.

We see little of this man’s past, there is nothing personal about his story.  (We get one short video of his brother telling him he is an uncle, and fantasy moments of a sexy woman on all fours in a thong with wind blowing around her hair.  Original!)  Since the man is left very undeveloped I can only assume that he is meant to represent a broad sense of humanity. Trying to suggest this is a universal story is ludicrous since the only voices heard are white, male Americans saying next to nothing. I am a fan of open-ended films, but there needs to be at least one element of any art film that excites you, bothers you or stays with you. LOVE left next to no impression on me.

SIFF 2011

 

SIFF is here!!

So many movies!

So many choices....


For this years SIFF I plan on seeing at least ten movies, hopefully more.

Choosing the films is one of the funnest parts of the festival. I love getting the catalog, reading about movies and marking off one's that look good. Of course with 400 movies to flip through it can be overwhelming. I thin out the choices by focusing on films that are by and/or about women. If it is directed by a women and about women it will automatically peak my interest.
It's cool being able to go online to the SIFF site and watch trailers of most of the films (some don't have previews up) which helps give me an idea of the quality and style of a movie.
Horror is also one of my favorite genre's and most years I see some great movies in this catagory. last year I saw the super violent DREAM HOUSE, which had some very disturbing (and awesome) deaths. Three years ago I saw the amazing Swedish film LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. This year there isn't any of the horror films I am very interested in. There were several that looked fun in the catalog but when I watched the previews they didn't look as good. THE INTRUDER, THE VILLAGE OF SHADOWS and WE ARE THE NIGHT are all horror movies where the previews made me uninterested.
I do want to see TROLLHUNTER, a fun looking "found footage" style monster movies about giant trolls. Also BELLFLOWER looks interesting, but I have a lot of American films on my list already and am trying to see one's from more countries.

Here are 4 movies at the very top of my list:
CIRCUMSTANCE directed by Maryam Keshavarz filmed in Lebanon
BELLE EPINE directed by Rebecca Ziotowski from France
WITHOUT directed by Mark Jackson filmed here on Whidbey Island
THE OFF HOURS directed by Megan Griffiths from Seattle and starring Tony Doupe, an acting teacher I had.

Other films that I hope to catch are LYS (Germany), WOMB (Germany/Hungary/France), PINOY SUNDAY (Taiwan), TABLOID (USA), AMADOR (Spain), FUCK MY LIFE (Chilli), TIMES AND WINDS (Turkey), JUAN (Denmark), THE WHISTLEBLOWER (Canada/Germany), JUCY (Australia), LOVE LIKE POISON (France)

The first movie I have seen has been LOVE (USA) and I will be writing a review of it along with all the films I see in the festival. So look for those soon. 

SCREAM 4! blast from the past

In one week, SCREAM 4 hits theaters, and I am kind of excited.

I have good memories of the first two SCREAM movies. I saw them both in theaters with good friends, pretty sure I saw the first one twice. I owned both of them (on VHS). The third SCREAM movie, sadly, I did not like one bit. To be fair, I have little memory of it, but I for sure was disappointed and thought it was not scary at all. It tipped the scales way to far on the clever side (failing to be so)  and went way to light on actual suspense.

Will SCREAM 4 have a death as good as Rose McGowen stuck in the cat door getting her neck broke from the garage door going up? I doubt it.

Will SCREAM 4 kill one of our leading characters? Neve, Courtney or David?????  Maybe.

I figure good or bad at least we get to check out Courtney and David together in the roles that first introduced the now married couple, who just now separated while filming this movie! Gossip. We also get to check out Neve Campbell who has pretty much gone away in the last 10+ years.
Then there is the new young cast who will possibly be awful, but I know Anna Paquin is in it, who's great, and I am predicting she gets offed early, Drew Barrymore style. The cast also has Emma Roberts, the cheerleader from Hero's, Adam Brody and Heather Graham, who played Barrymore's character in the movie within the movie in SCREAM 2.

So what are the chances it will be any good?

I think strong. I doubt it will be as good as the original, but its hard to do that. It looks as if they return to high school format, with our returning characters being the adults. It is a good formate and I think the years off has given it time to seem fresh again, while also bringing back nostalgic feelings.
It gets to make fun of itself all it wants because that is the world in SCREAM, characters who reference horror films. Also, the first SCREAM helped bring back the horror movie franchise, and now it has changed, so the movie has new cliches and horror movie trends to exploit.

The preview looks good enough. I am going to go ahead and predict that I will enjoy this movie! Makes me think about the old times. Maybe I will watch all three of them before I see the new one. Even SCREAM 3.