HollyWagers does CineVegas!
That's right, we got a Vegas exclusive look at what's going down at the 2007 CineVegas Film Festival happening at the Palms Hotel and Casino!
This year's crop of movies has been the most diverse set of films yet so far this year, and both myself and RJ Bell, president of Pregame.com, have some reviews of what we've seen so far:
RJ's reviews:
Malos habitos (English Title: Bad Habits)
2007 - Mexico (Spanish)
Food and rain are the two major themes that dominate this first feature from award winning ad director Simon Bross. In nearly every scene someone is eating - and in nearly every scene it is raining. Though thin on plot, a powerful creation of mood through deft visuals delivers a compelling viewing experience. A doctor turned nun strains to change the world through food depravation. An obsessed mother hardly eats to keep her figure, while her chubby daughter huddles over contraband chocolate cake behind a locked bathroom door. While the father takes up an affair that mixes sex and food with a full figured student. The deeper theme, it seems, is that while food is necessary, attempting to gain solace from either too little or too much of it comes with grave long-term consequences.
OVERALL SCORE: 69 out of 100
Loren Cass
2006 - United States (English)
Directed by 24 year-old Chris Fuller, Loren Cass is an unwavering depiction of hopeless youth. I've always enjoyed the nihilism of Bret Ellis' fiction in which the rich, beautiful characters futilely attempted to fill their lives with enough glitz to compensate for the lack of substance. And we all are familiar with adolescent characters who move through the world in a state of delusion - believing their lives' "drama" to be worthy of the name. The characters who inhabit Loren Cass, though, gain zero joy from anything (including a great deal of random sex). Neither do they strive for glitz, nor do they acknowledge the existence of anything worth caring about. What is it that causes this state of hopeless? I'm not sure.
The artistry of the film is impressive, with many still shots and extremely sparse dialogue. The effect is disjointed and collage-like, lacking any standard sense of story arch. For an art film fan this fact is not an indictment, but the following question is: If the characters don't care, and if the film's perspective fails to portray underlying virtue of life they are overlooking, why should the viewer care enough to watch?
Overall Score: 65 of a possible 100
Drama/Mex
2006 - Mexico (Spanish)
Allow me to start this review with a disclaimer: I saw director's Gerardo Naranjo's first feature, Malachance, at the 2004 CineVegas, and I was simply blown away. As perhaps a commentary on how my taste syncs with the public's, Malachance failed to find either big screen or DVD release. So I entered Drama/Mex with high expectations. Again, Naranjo displays an impressive command of the film making process - deftly handling every type of scene. The film's primary theme, that superficial drama of typical lives buries the greater truths of our character, is a thought provoking and noble premise. One, though, which fell short for me when, dig as I might, I failed to unearth any compelling truths beneath the surface of these characters. Leaving the theater, I felt like a man who had popcorn for dinner - albeit, one who will anxiously accept the director's next dinner party invitation.
Overall Score: 67 of a possible 100
My reviews:
Tie A Yellow Ribbon
2007 - United States (English)
One of the opening lines from the main character of Tie A Yellow Ribbon is, "I was born at the airport. 45 pounds and 45 inches tall." This line hints at the emotionally complex backstory of the main character Jenny Mason in this movie, a Korean girl adopted by a white midwestern family. She lives in NYC, works at a hip café, and doesn't get emotionally involved with anyone in her life. She is forced out of her apartment by her (white) roommate, whose boyfriend is moving in, and recommended to move in with Bea, who her roommate says she has a lot in common with: they're both Asian.
Moving into a new apartment building opens a new world of characters for Jenny, including a brother/sister pair of neighbors who are Chinese-American, the sister for whom does cleaning for their white landlord to supplement the rent. In this new environment Jenny is in some ways forced to confront her past, which includes a love affair with her adopted brother that got her kicked out of the house at 14.
Kim Jiang, who plays Jenny, does an adept job at portraying both a girl who is coming to terms with her past while trying to do the best that she can for her current circumstances. Writer/Director Joy Dietrich films every scene beautifully and intently, especially from the point of view of Jenny, who is an aspiring photographer. The voiceover dialogue is poetic, and Dietrich, who mentioned before the movie that it was about her disassociation with America, nails her feelings down in those scenes. Unfortunately, there much of the dialogue that feels forced, predictable, and a little hard to listen to. There are also some stereotypes that Dietrich tries to twist but unfortunately become just stereotypes: the Pre-Med-must-get-straight-A's Bea, the "meek Asian" neighbor Cindy, the sleezy white gallery owner who is into Asian culture and Asian women.
It is Dietrich's second full-length, and it'll be a treat to see how she grows with future movies.
Overall score: 65 out of 100
Frownland
2007 - United States (English)
I should make the disclaimer that I actually said at the end of this film, "That was 2 hours of my life I'll never get back." People actually booed at the end of it. But now that I've had a day to think on it, and have heard what the director had to say about it, I'm warming up a little.
This is not a movie for people who want their characters or plots drawn up for them in neat little packages. It's not even for people who insist you must even like the main character: and not even like him in the protagonist sense. It's very much a impressionistic kind of movie, a glimpse into the life of someone whose social cues are so invisible you wonder how they get through life. It's a movie to make you sit down at a party and glimpse into this kind of person. And the thing is, we've all known people like this, who are so anxious they can't get a full sentence out of their mouth, who will call at 3 in the morning because no one else will answer the phone. I have to say I'm usually the one who sits down at a party, not because I'm a sucker for punishment, but because most of the time people like that aren't eve given a chance. They're just trying to make their way like you and me, but they're just not as well-versed with dealing with people.
At the Q & A after the film, someone mentioned that it's almost an absurdist kind of movie, and it really is. The main character, Keith, shares a 1-bedroom apartment with a roommate who won't pay the bills; he has a friend who is a bartender who gives in to his phone calls to come over, and when Keith falls asleep watching a movie, the friend fasts forward to the end and wakes him up to kick him out. You're not sure if you feel bad for Keith or the bartender friend. And that's what makes this movie work for me, even if I had to take some time to think about how many people like Keith I've met in my life. More than I want to admit.
Overall score: 55 out of 100 posted by Kari at 12:00 PM
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