SLIFF 2008: Special

2006 // USA // Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore // November 17, 2008 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

For awhile, Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore's Special succeeds as a blackly comedic take on the superhero film. In early scenes, the directors balance admittedly hilarious visual gags and absurdity with an array of straightforward themes—the wearying banality of urban life, our longing for pharmacological solutions to our miseries, and, yes, the sadly juvenile nature of comic fandom. In Michael Rapaport, Haberm and Passmore seem to have found their ideal man-child. Rapaport portrays Les, a parking enforcement officer who enters a drug trial that will allegedly boost his self-confidence. Deluded that he has acquired a plethora of superpowers—flight, telepathy, teleportation, speed, and invulnerability—Les appoints himself the city's crime fighter. (Mostly this consists of tackling shoplifters and purse-snatchers.) The film's initial treatment of Les—the unfortunate and softly sympathetic progeny of society's multitude sicknesses—is fascinating, but Haberman Passmore don't seem to know what to do him. Things go off the rails once the directors introduce a medical and financial conspiracy, and then start engaging in bizarre indulgences that smell of a misdirected pretension. Despite some engaging developments in a thin romantic subplot, by its final twenty minutes Special is stuck in a narrative and thematic mire from which it never escapes.

SLIFF 2008: Wendy and Lucy

2008 // USA // Kelly Reichardt // November 17, 2008 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

Unquestionably the best film I have had the pleasure to catch at the Festival so far, Wendy and Lucy is a work of riveting drama and touching humanity. Michelle Williams, all anxiousness and trembling desperation in a ragged black pixie cut, stars as Wendy, a young woman drifting her way to Alaska in search of work. Her companion is a frisky mutt, Lucy, to whom Wendy exhibits a profound and obsessive devotion that will be familiar to any pet owner. Eschewing a soundtrack or a dribble of unnecessary exposition, Wendy and Lucy portrays a few days of the companions' tribulations in small-town Oregon, where a cascade of bad luck threatens their future together. Williams, who is essentially on screen for the entire running time, mesmerizes in a portrayal simmering with weariness, terror, and directionless anger. Employing a breathtaking, chafed naturalism, director Kelly Reichardt expertly conveys the despair of life on the American margins, where vagrancy is criminalized and loose change is tallied like the remaining days of a prison sentence. Earning every spasm of heartache with her genuine depiction of life's casual cruelties, Reichardt captures a wrenching picture of the sacrifices we all make for those we love.

SLIFF 2008: Sinner Come Home

2007 // USA // Blake Eckard // November 17, 2008 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

Blake Eckard's tale of eroding relationships and morality--and not-quite-redemption--in the ossified small-town landscape of northwestern Missouri never quite achieves the searing strength that the director hopes for. Perhaps that's because Sinner Come Home is most potent in its quiet moments, as Eckard's characters, particularly his protagonist Eddie (Ryan Harper Gray), suss out the pivotal conflicts in their lives in elliptical, beer-soaked mumblings. Eckard evokes Jeff Nichols' Shotgun Stories or even Killer of Sheep in his keen awareness of the everyday indignities suffered by Americans who dwell outside the ramparts of suburban ease. Sinner Come Home, however, is no neo-realist snapshot, no matter how natural its rhythms. No, what Eckard delivers is gaping melodrama, complete with unfortunate dips into wincing dialog and a tragedy that comes out of left field. The stiff, self-conscious acting of many of the performers breaks the film's authentic spell and betrays the creakiness of a film-maker still developing his talents. Still, for all its telltale seams, Sinner Come Home offers a bold examination of the perils of rural life, absent populist mythologizing or condescension. Insightfully and without judgment, Eckard perceives the poison in the sheer boredom and dissatisfaction of a small-town existence.

SLIFF 2008: It's Hard to Be Nice

2008 // Bosnia and Herzegovina // Srdjan Vuletic // November 17, 2008 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

Never mind the glibness of its title: Srdjan Vuletic's It's Hard to Be Nice is a raw fable about the curious outline that morality assumes in a wounded society. For a few weeks, we follow the darkly comic struggles of Sarajevo cab driver Fudo, portrayed with boundless appeal by Sasa Petrovic. With the fortitude of a friendly, beaten hound, Fudo attempts to claw his way out of a criminal past and into a prosperous, upstanding future for his wife and infant son. Unabashedly allegorical yet characterized by a dirty-fingernail pathos, It's Hard to Be Nice rarely overreaches in its bitter commentary on the contemporary cultural struggles of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Partial credit goes to Patrovic, who delivers a performance of miserable humor and righteous flickers, the latter tinged with the pitch-perfect awkwardness of a newly repentant man. That said, it's Vuletic who adeptly maintains the film's balance of naturalism and tragic fancy, excepting some bouts of manipulative silliness at the conclusion. Conveying the tribulations of reform and forgiveness with a knowing appreciation for its complexities, Vuletic captures the conflicting demands of law, peace, greed, and duty that overwhelm societies emerging from war's shadow.

SLIFF 2008: The Objective

2008 // USA - Morocco // Daniel Myrick // November 16, 2008 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

The Objective is director Daniel Myrick's first feature film since his auspicious debut, The Blair Witch Project, a clockwork vice of old school terror. Unfortunately, this sophomore effort is just an uninspired genre two-step, an unmemorable The X-Files episode drawn out to feature length, with all the bland beats that implies. In the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan, a squad of soldiers and a local translator follow the lead of a shifty CIA agent (Jonas Ball), who fiddles with gizmos and remains stingy with the mission details. Ostensibly, they're seeking out a holy man for propaganda purposes, but you don't need me to tell you there's something else going on. Ball narrates in a grave monotone, tossing around Conrad-style mutterings plucked from the middle of creative writing class grading curve. Otherwise, The Objective isn't really an awful film, just so thoroughly recycled in its details and limp in its execution that one wonders how Myrick managed to spin it out to 90 minutes. Admittedly, the film coaxes some arresting and terrifying sights here and there, lunging at Western fears of Islam and American illusions of omnipotence. Given that the portentous conclusion explains nothing, however, I wonder why I bothered.

SLIFF 2008: The Grocer's Son

2007 // France // Eric Guirado // November 16, 2008 // Theatrical Print (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

On paper, there's nothing remarkable about Eric Guirado's gently empathetic The Grocer's Son that might recommend it above any other slightly implausible tale of personal transformation in a humble setting. The vaguely misanthropic Antoine (Nicolas Cazalé) returns from the city to his family's provincial general store after his father (the delightfully craggy Daniel Duval) suffers a heart attack. Antoine reluctantly agrees to take over the grocery van route through the area's remote hamlets, dragging along his spunky neighbor, Claire (Clotilde Hesme), in the hopes that his not-so-secret crush might bear fruit in the country air. It sounds trite, so why does The Grocer's Son feel like such a fresh breeze, a holiday snapshot of the perils of family, love, human decency, and the inexorable shifts in the French culture and landscape? Guirado triumphantly wrestles against every lousy cinematic instinct and presents a subdued, finely structured work whose uncluttered and poignant realism emerges as its finest asset. The performances are commendable—particularly Cazalé, who fills out a role that tempts cheap distaste and a hasty redemption—but the film's success rests on its simplicity. Guirado's eye for the patterns of rural life and the novel strains they exert shine through with clarity.