Triangle *
Johnnie To/Ringo Lam/Wai Ka-fai, 2008
Hong Kong
@ Cinerama

Johnnie To's segment certainly bore some of his trademarks, and was my favorite of the the three, the funniest as well. I wonder if this was a fun project to work on, because the viewing experience doesn't seem to be enhanced in any way. I suppose it might be useful if the three directors have separate followings who would converge on this omnibus project.

See also: IMDb

La France **
Serge Bozon, 2008
France
@ Pacific Place

Mysterious and explained just the right amount, which is basically none. I found myself puzzling over the suggestion that Camille's search for her husband was equivalent to a search for death. It's possible that I wouldn't be able to get some things with my pretty casual knowledge of French history.

IMDb

Sunrise ***
F.W. Murnau, 1927
US
@ The Triple Door

Expressive and surprisingly nuanced even though the plot seems to be laid out right from the beginning. Has the feel of myth rather than just melodrama.

See also: IMDb

Pierre Rissient: Man of the Cinema ***
Todd McCarthy, 2008
US/France
@ SIFF Cinema

Fascinating, particularly the early years where Rissient is creating a new career for himself to precisely channel his love of cinema.

See also: IMDb

The End
Nikkola Collins, 2008
UK
@ Harvard Exit

The only true disappointment of the festival. One of those experiences in which people with a kind of debased, sour outlook on life try to tell you, "That's just how life is," while simultaneously revealing both their limited purview and obvious artifice of the way in which they are attempting to persuade you of the fact. Ugly, grim, fatalistic, and kind of boring.

See also: Official site

Momma's Man ***
Azazel Jacobs, 2008
US
@ Uptown Cinema

A slow, intermittently depressing meditation on something like a pre-mid-life crisis. It is essentially cinema of duration, in that most of the payoff, both depressing and redemptive, comes from just sitting with the main character and his parents as he awkwardly finds his own way through whatever emotional problems he's facing. I'm guessing whoever brought a whole crowd of high school kids had some other sort of idea about the film beforehand.

See also: IMDb

Still Orangutans ***
Gustavo Spolidoro, 2008
Brazil
@ Pacific Place

At first disorienting, but the accumulating intensity of the contiguous vignettes builds much like a rapid succession of drinks, eventually unleashing its full effect, here pent up until the last moment. Probably less of a city symphony than a catalogue of the wildness of the human spirit, a lingering sub-humanity referred to in the title. Maybe the best thing I've seen this year.

See also: IMDb

Baghead **
Duplass Bros., 2008
US
@ Egyptian Theater

Is Greta Gerwig always going to be this good? __'s chubby brother suggests a kind of smarter, more truly endearing Jon Lovitz, and I think he could be great in big-budget movies. That is, if character actors were really valued and made use of these days. I'm also real excited about Dodecadecathlon.

See also: IMDb

Christopher Columbus: The Enigma **
Manoel de Oliveira, 2008
Portugal
@ SIFF Cinema

I still don't really know why this worked so well for me, but it hit the spot. Almost like something you might catch late at night on PBS, at once baffling and clear in its intentions. Maybe it was just the location photography around Portugal that got me excited.

See also: IMDb

Sparrow **
Johnnie To, 2008
Hong Kong
@ Uptown Cinema

Terminally slight, but oh-so-stylish. Simon Yam almost always has the exact same expression on his face, but he wears it so well. The umbrella sequence almost feel a bit overdramatic, but the city scenes all had such a jaunty flair that it's impossible to come away frowning.

See also: IMDb

Mad Detective *
Johnnie To/Wai Ka-fai, 2008
Hong Kong
@ Egyptian Theater

Movies featuring a deluded protagonist almost always feel like a letdown to me, except The Ruling Class in which Jack's delusions jibe exactly with England's insane political culture to form a brutal satire. The opening scene, though, is pretty much timeless.

See also: IMDb

You, The Living **
Roy Andersson, 2008
Sweden
@ Egyptian Theater

Seemed comprehensible from moment to moment, but overall didn't seem to gel into a complete experience.

See also: IMDb

Blind Mountain **
Li Yang, 2008
China
@ Pacific Place

Sort of a long grind, but possibly saved by the thrillingly unexpected and shockingly brief finale.

See also: IMDb

Great Speeches from a Dying World ***
Linas Phillips, 2008
US
@ Harvard Exit

I suspect this would have been almost as good even if I weren't familiar with the city or anyone in the film.

See also: Official site

Ploy *
Pen-ek Ratanaruang, 2008
Thailand
@ Pacific Place

Slow and somewhat bewildering but lovely all the same.

See also: IMDb

Captain Ahab **
Philippe Ramos, 2008
France
@ Uptown Cinema

Kind of like a fairy tale in the best sense. Very light, nonchalant storytelling that uses setting and mise en scene to communicate some of the story. Wouldn't it be amazing if, instead of simply structuring a (possible) series of films like a three-act unit, sequels or prequels were used to get more directly to deeper themes or to focus better on intangible, ineffable qualities of what we see on the screen. Perhaps that's what the Nolan brothers thought they were trying to do with The Dark Knight, but there are certainly other, better ways this could happen.

See also: IMDb

Eat for This Is My Body **
Michelange Quaye, 2008
Haiti/France
@ Northwest Film Forum

Part Haitian ethnography, part historically symbolic series of set pieces featuring a white French matriarch, her daughter, and a group of Haitian boys. It's profoundly visual: the opening shot is from a helicopter approaching the island over a city, hitting the beach, then neighborhoods, slums, and increasingly scattered huts, and eventually foothills and the barren, stripped mountainsides. Also, there is an amazing food-fight scene featuring a large cake that gets totally demolished; it seems less portentous than most other scenes, but that could be misleading.

See also: IMDb

Casting a Glance *
James Benning, 2007
US
@ Northwest Film Forum

Fascinating in the limited scope of the work. This is foregrounded by the limited perspective of the camera, only revealing a partial view of the landscape surrounding the Spiral Jetty, and never placing it in context for the uninitiated viewer, which would pretty much be me.

See also: IMDb

Loos Ornamental ***
Heinz Emigholz, 2008
Germany
@ Northwest Film Forum

Incredible.

First come a few words in German, and then there are no words at all, only images of Adolf Loos's architecture, arranged in a chronological slide show of long-held video stills inside and outside the buildings, mainly in Vienna. Loos famously eschewed ornament, reducing form to function by exposing beams, stacking grids, and letting materials express their own conditions. This makes for some genteel moments, but there's also the return of the repressed, in perfectly flat and geometric surfaces that nonetheless roar like baroque sculpture because they are made of wildly mottled red or green marble. Drunk on the dream of modernism, you reach the end of the film, where there's only a cube gravestone with the architect's name on it. It's right in the city, and a train passes close behind it.

See also: IMDb | Jen Graves in The Stranger

Continental, or A Film without Guns **
Stephane Lafleur, 2008
Canada
@ Pacific Place

A more wistful, slightly less fanciful, French-Canadian version of Me and You and Everyone We Know.

See also: IMDb