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The Hurt Locker (Director: Kathryn Bigelow): I have only seen one other Kathryn Bigelow film, the oddly miscast Strange Days (1995), so I’m far from an expert on her work, but other critics have pointed out that she’s a first-rate director of action sequences. The Hurt Locker is not really an action film, but it somehow is able to ramp up suspense and maintain it for the entire length of the film, and so I came out of the film with the same sense of release as if I’d just seen lots of stuff blow up.
In fact, it’s the job of the characters in this film to make sure stuff doesn’t blow up. They are the three members of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Baghdad. The team leader is the absurdly macho Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), whose predecessor was killed by a remotely detonated bomb as he was trying to defuse it. Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are cautious and emotionally scarred men just hoping to survive the 38 days left of their unit’s rotation in Iraq. They don’t appreciate the recklessness of their new leader, and at one point nervously discuss whether they should “frag” him.
But as the days go by, his recklessness seems to inspire something like confidence, or at least it reduces their fear a little. We accompany this small group of men on their daily rounds, and the level of tension never lets up. The difference between James and his subordinates is that he seems to thrive on the rush of danger his job gives him. As the days are ticked off, we feel relief for the men wanting to go home, but James never seems to change. Toward the end of the film, there is a very brief scene of him back home with his wife and infant son, and he looks completely out of place. He mumbles something to his wife about the need for trained bomb techs back in Iraq, as if it’s the war that needs him, rather than the other way around. The final scene doesn’t come as a surprise, James striding confidently off the helicopter back into the hellish streets of Baghdad, but I was glad that at least I was not going to have to accompany him on another bomb-defusing mission.
Bigelow’s direction is excellent throughout, with some of the images approaching the surreal, especially when James is inside the special armoured suit that is meant to protect him from bomb blasts. He looks like an astronaut on the surface of a very dangerous alien landscape, which is exactly what he is. Where the film isn’t so strong is in its overly expository dialogue. It seems completely unnecessary to tell us something that is obvious from the actions of the characters, which is why the quote that introduces the film, from Chris Hedges’ book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is also unneeded. Sergeant James’ character, like many of the memorable characters from war films, seems almost like a caricature, because he so single-mindedly pursues the high that war gives him. Jeremy Renner is well-cast, projecting a square-jawed lumpishness that hides any complicated thoughts he might be having. When Sanborn asks him why he doesn’t seem to be scared, he honestly seems not to know. He’s almost bemused by his lack of knowledge. Perhaps there are people who are just born to fight wars.
Apart from a few short cameos, The Hurt Locker is mercifully free of “movie stars,” and it’s refreshing to see characters first, rather than actors. All three of the lead actors are fine, but I think Renner will be the one we’ll be seeing more of very soon.
Official site of the film
(8/10)
Tagged as:
iraq,
war
One of the greatest things about attending SIFT this year was meeting some wonderful filmmakers. Paramita Nath is a Toronto native who has just had her first film, a documentary short, accepted at the Palm Springs Shortfest in California. Although it might officially be the world premiere, we were lucky enough to see it in our documentary workshop first.
Found packs a lot into its brief 6-minute running time. It tells the life story of Toronto poet Souvankham Thammavongsa through a notebook that she found after her father discarded it. Using her own poetry, animation, home video and excerpts from her father’s notebook, Thammavongsa herself narrates how she made her way as a premature baby from a Lao refugee camp in Thailand all the way to Toronto. By preserving the essential mystery of what’s actually in the notebook, and therefore leaving her father an enigma, Thammavongsa’s story seems like the beginning of a longer quest to find out who she is, and this small evocative film makes the viewer curious to discover more of the poetry that accompanies the beautifully-captured images (captured, incidentally, by Jennifer Baichwal’s husband and regular cinematographer, Nick de Pencier).
Palm Springs Shortfest runs from June 23-29 and Found will be screening on Wednesday June 24 at 7:00pm.
(9/10)
Tagged as:
shorts
“What I’ve always wanted to do is direct.” More cringeworthy words have never been uttered, when it comes to Hollywood stars wanting to switch sides of the camera. But is that fair? Lots of actors have gone on to respectable careers as directors (Clint Eastwood and Ron Howard to name just two, though I’m not a fan of either). So here are six shorts: vanity projects or first forays into a new career? I’ll let you know.
- Glock (12 minutes, USA, Director: Tom Everett Scott): Written, directed by and starring Tom Everett Scott, this is a harmless bit of fun concerning a newly-trained spy who waits for his phone to ring with secret missions. Extremely broad humour and a standard short film “punch line” ending. (7/10)
- Eve (22 minutes, USA, Director: Natalie Portman): Olivia Thirlby plays a young woman visiting her grandmother (Lauren Bacall) who drags her along on a date with a widower (Ben Gazzara). The younger woman is eager to discuss her mother Eve but the older woman avoids the subject. There’s some indication that Eve is troubled. I thought Bacall brought a real sense of gravitas to the proceedings, even as her character rather shallowly pursues Gazzara for his money. Thirlby was also strong as a serious young woman looking for some answers. Portman was wise to keep the story small and tightly-focussed, and her direction is anything but showy. Sufjan Stevens’ piano score added another layer of class. (8/10)
- Monday Before Thanksgiving (19 minutes, USA, Director: Courteney Cox): Filled with the worst sort of clichés and plot contrivances, including some wisdom-spouting voiceover at both beginning and end. A truly bad script, too, about being happy and single or something. Sad to see Laura Dern in this sort of dreck. (5/10)
- One Of Those Days (14 minutes, UK, Director: Hattie Dalton): Derek Jacobi’s performance lifts this rather shopworn subject matter, playing a man who finds himself and his wife caught up in some bureaucratic bungling on Judgement Day. Slickly shot, though not terribly original. (7/10)
- The Spleenectomy (12 minutes, USA, Director: Kirsten Smith): Similarly, Anna Faris rises above some mediocre material, playing twin sisters, one a scattered and unsuccessful community theatre actress, and the other a prim surgeon. Of course, there’s a case of mistaken identity. And a precocious cute son with glasses. Meh. (6/10)
- Sparks (24 minutes, USA, Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt): Based on a short story by Elmore Leonard, Sparks is the most overtly showy of the films I saw tonight. Gordon-Levitt takes a risk with some of his tricks but I thought he mostly succeeded. Eric Stoltz plays an insurance investigator trying to determine if Carla Gugino’s character burned down her own house. The noirish plot and dialogue are contrasted with some jarring editing decisions and oddly artificial props and sets. Beginning and ending with scenes of Gugino singing with a rock band added some great energy. (Director’s site) (8/10)
In my research, I discovered that both Monday Before Thanksgiving and The Spleenectomy were part of Glamour Reel Moments, a competition running annually since 2005, sponsored by Glamour magazine and Suave shampoo! Each film was apparently “inspired” by an idea submitted by a Glamour reader. Another film from this year’s edition, Streak was directed by Demi Moore and starred her daughter Rumer Willis. Initially, I wondered why that one didn’t make it into this programme, but seeing as the two Glamour-sponsored films were my least favourite, I’m not really bothered to track down Demi’s effort now.
Tagged as:
#wsff09,
shorts,
worldwideshortfilmfest
Space. The final frontier. To boldly go where no short filmmaker has gone before…I was looking forward to this collection of sci-fi shorts for two reasons. First was to see the sort of kitschy retro-camp stuff where the effects and costumes are crappy on purpose. But secondly, I wanted to see if some of these directors could use the limitations of the short film format to explore some idea about the future in an interesting way. I’m happy that this programme came through on both fronts.
- Die Schneider Krankheit (11 minutes, Spain, Director: Javier Chillon): I had higher hopes for this film, a mock 50s short filmed in propagandistic style. A spaceship crashes in West Germany with a chimpanzee astronaut aboard. He quickly infects the whole country with a strange virus, which changes life for everyone. The fact that it’s made to look like a German film though actually made by Spaniards may have diffused some of the impact, as we heard the Spanish narrator dubbing the German soundtrack, with English subtitles as well. Some great visuals, though (and not a frame of archival footage, though it all looks archival). (Official site with trailer, poster and even lobby cards.) (7/10)
- Civilian (4 minutes, USA, Director: Seaton Lin): Based on real interviews with a woman who claimed to be abducted by aliens, this short film focuses too much on portraying the act of hypnotizing her and not enough on what she claims to have seen. Far too short to be memorable, even with such compelling subject matter. (See the whole film here.) (6/10)
- Marooned? (15 minutes, USA, Director: Ryan Nagata): Filmed in Death Valley, Marooned? got quite a few laughs with its story about a live-action roleplaying game that goes very wrong. Michael McCafferty is well-cast as the middle-aged sci-fi nerd who hires a couple of guys to play in the desert with him before a knock on the head has him wondering if he really is stranded on an alien planet. (Official site) (8/10)
- Star Games (3 minutes, UK, Director: Jasmin Jodry): Stunningly choreographed gymnasts and divers are combined with archival footage of zeppelins and Art Deco New York to create a gorgeous narrative of athletes becoming literal stars. (Watch the whole film here.) (9/10)
- The Attack of The Robots From Nebula-5 (El ataque de los robots de nebulosa-5) (7 minutes, Spain, Director: Chema García Ibarra): A mentally disturbed man believes that a robot invasion is imminent. His attempts to warn his family are futile, mostly because his drawings of the invaders are so childish. A great mixture of sweetness and menace, with great deadpan narration from the misunderstood messenger of doom. (Official site) (8/10)
- The Survivor of The Hippocampus (Le rescapé de l’hippocampe) (13 minutes, France, Director: Julien Lecat): French chanteuse Juliette Noureddine (above, left) is brilliantly cast as a madam who enters her friend’s brain on his request to delete the memory of his brother. Wildly inventive on a tiny budget and extremely short production schedule (the film was created for a contest). (Official site) (9/10)
- 2000: A Documentary Science Fiction (7 minutes, Bulgaria, Director: Andrey Paounov): From the director of quirky doc The Mosquito Problem and Other Stories comes this pseudo-doc, supposedly made in 1973 by the members of a metalworks’ cinema club in Communist Bulgaria. Its view of the year 2000 is charmingly off-kilter, featuring intermarriage between humans and robots, and families of space explorers. Certainly loses something outside of Eastern Europe, where its satire would feel sharper. (7/10)
- Cold and Dry (Tørt og kjølig) (12 minutes, Norway, Director: Kristoffer Joner): Essentially a thought exercise: what would happen if we could freeze-dry people and revive them in the future? Scientist Torstein thinks he’s helping society by freezing the criminally insane, the sick and the old, reasoning that surely society will be able to help these people in the future. But soon, freezing begins to appeal to anyone with a problem that can be solved in the future; that is, everyone. Smart and lean. (9/10)
- Postman Returns (3 minutes, Netherlands, Director: Mischa Rozema): So short as to be essentially plotless and characterless, this animated short nevertheless pushes the boundaries of whatever type of 3-D rendering software was used to create it. (Watch the whole film here.) (8/10)
- Captain Coulier (Space Explorer) (13 minutes, Canada, Director: Lyndon Casey): Inspired, according to the director, by Canadian winters, this campy space sitcom felt like being trapped in a van with four of your friends driving across the prairies. The humour is as spontaneous as the sniping is inevitable, but it’s all hilarious. Purposely cheesy art direction serves the overall goal of portraying an inadequate spaceship crew whose captain struggles with his own, um, inadequacy. (Official site) (9/10)
Tagged as:
#wsff09,
scifi,
shorts,
worldwideshortfilmfest
As is their custom, the organizers of the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival dedicate the Opening Night program to award-winning shorts from around the world. This means that these films have screened lots of other places, but for me, they’re still discoveries.
- Next Floor (12 minutes, Canada, Director: Denis Villeneuve): Eerily reminiscent of the banquet scenes in Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, this stunningly art-directed short provides a nausea-inducing chronicle of a decadent banquet. The comedy is provided by the recurring event of the table crashing through the floor and the waiters rushing down stairs to the “next floor.” The dark edge came when I couldn’t stop thinking that this was a stinging indictment of consumerism and environmental degradation. (9/10)
- Skhizein (13 minutes, France, Director: Jeremy Clapin): Another one that starts out with humour and ends with tragedy. Our animated hero suffers a sense of displacement after a meteor hits the earth. He’s precisely 91cm “off” which provides the animators with plenty of sight gags. But by the end, we realize that what’s really being portrayed is a form of mental illness. Powerful. (9/10) (Note: The image above is from this short.)
- Jerrycan (14 minutes, Australia, Director: Julius Avery): A kid stands up to a bully with explosive results. Aims at the gritty realism of something like Andrea Arnold’s Wasp but a little too heavy on the metaphor and light on dialogue. (7/10)
- Coffee and Allah (14 minutes, New Zealand, Director: Sima Urale): An Ethiopian Muslim woman recently arrived in New Zealand feels out of place, but ultimately bonds with her neighbours over badminton and coffee. Too “cute” for my taste and actually seemed much longer than its 14 minute running time. (6/10)
- Gone Fishing (Director: Chris Jones): Part tall tale and part sober remembrance. Grasps at magic realism and comes up empty. Technically polished but ultimately let down by its mawkish script and manipulative music. (6/10)
- The Secret Life of Beards (6 minutes, USA, Director: Melanie Levy): This whimsical doc asks several men about their beards. For some it’s an expression of their religion, while for others it represents freedom, or just laziness. Fun but feather light. (7/10)
- Teaching the Alphabet (4 minutes, Germany, Director: Volker Schreiner): Someone recites the alphabet over clips from Hollywood movies which highlight each letter. Underwhelming. (6/10)
Stay tuned for more reviews as the fest continues to June 21st. Tickets are available online and at the venues (Cumberland and ROM theatres).
Tagged as:
#wsff09,
shorts,
worldwideshortfilmfest
