Day 5: September 11

Today was the For Your Consideration news conference, and it ended up being extremely disappointing. While Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy were their usual laconic selves (listen to any of their DVD commentaries for an indication of their drawl) the rest of the cast was pretty muted. Michael McKean and Harry Shearer did manage to keep it from being a total bust.

The Fountain screening was amusing, as an entire room of journalists and industry types were there to see what had already been determined to be a massive failure. For most I'm not sure that the film assuaged them of this predetermination.

The Fountain
Directed by: Darren Aronofsky

Grade: B-/C+

A beautiful mess of a movie, mixing time travel, conquistadors and metaphysics to look at the nature of life, love and death. Heady stuff, it's a tale told in three time periods - 1500, 2000, and 2500 A.D. Aronofsy's ambition is to tie the past and future together with a tale of medical ambition that tries to cheat death, relating it to the search for the fountain of youth by the Spanish fleet and a trippy, bald dude astro-boy from the future who sucks on tree bark for sustenance.

The visuals (shot as microphotography of organic and chemical substances rather than CGI) make for a visually compelling trip, but it all tends to play as a little to bleak, a little to trite. The audience was certainly mixed, and it's unclear to see how this will capture the zeitgeist like his equally ambitious Requiem. This is the type of American art film that a lot of people hate, distributed by Warner's as a major studio release. For that alone it's worth checking out, and it will no doubt find itself aging quite well, appreciated long after its (inevitably short) theatrical run.

The Half Life of Timofey Berezin
Directed by: Scott Z. Burns

Grade: B+

My film fest mantra continues - if a film does something that I've never seen before, it automatically gets bonus marks. In this film, someone snorts Plutonium like it was cocaine. Now, that's a major spoiler, but it's also the part of the film that will be remembered long after this competent if middle-of-the-road flick fades into the murky mists of festivals past. Set in post-Communist Russia, it's a quirky mix of incompetent bureaucrats and small time gangsters trying to carve a life in the new Russia. It's not often than a nuclear technician becomes the hero of the story, and there's enough style and originality to have this film stand ahead of the pack of similar, quirky flicks.

Renaissance
Directed by: Christian Volckman

Grade: B

Oooh! Black and white CGI about a near-future Paris! While we've seen this schtick before (not that Blade Runner can't be referenced, but cummon!), this rotoscoped flick does present the comic book world with a delightful starkness. I would rather have had Rodriguez shoot Sin City like this - abandoning greys, this is literally a black OR white film with no gradient in between. The inky blacks and bright whites make for a really interesting, printed look that's unique for my viewing, and that elevates this from being another boring cyberdrama. Bonus marks for abandoning the cliche about building up in the future, as instead our vision of Paris (Louvre, Eifel Tower) is the topmost level, and all the crap stuff is dug downward. It's a little thing, but something that elevates this (sorry for the pun) from other futurist tales.

The Abandoned
Directed by: Nacho Cerda

Grade: B-/C+

A weird and wicked tale further emphasizing that you can never go home again, especially if you never lived at home in the first place. Convoluted, yes, but this monster house/ghost story/family redemption film has it all, including some creepy makeup and loud, scary music. It's not the best MM this year, but it did keep to its guns and tie itself up nicely in the end.