Last year the French thriller, TELL NO ONE, ranked as one of the best films of the year. For this week’s lineup, This Weekend’s Film Festival takes the opportunity to look at a collection of superior French thrillers, a genre that French filmmakers have excelled in. Crime… murder… mystery… they all play a role in these films, but what is crucial to all of them is their characters drive the plot not the other way around like so many American thrillers. For fans of edge of your seat chills, I have a treat in store for you.
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When Aristomenis Tsirbas’ 3-D CG feature won the grand prize for features at the Ottawa International Animation Festival over acclaimed films such as WALTZ WITH BASHIR and SITA SINGS THE BLUES, I was surprised and eagerly awaited a chance to see this indie production. I believe the Canadian crowd in September 2008 connected to the anti-Bush administration themes within the film. For certain, TERRA, as it was known then, has ambitions larger than a typical animated action flick, but does it rise above the trappings of a typical animated action flick? Yes and no.

Taking the premise of H.G. Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS and flipping the roles, TERRA tells the story of a peaceful alien species that is about to be annihilated by an invading force of humans. Mala (Evan Rachel Wood, THE WRESTLER) is a young Terrian who likes adventure, but lives with her protective father Roven (Dennis Quaid, FAR FROM HEAVEN). When the humans invade, her father is abducted. To find answers, she saves the life of a crashed pilot named Jim Stanton (Luke Wilson, IDIOCRACY) and his loyal robot assistant Giddy (David Cross, GHOST WORLD). When they venture back to the human ship, Jim is lauded as a hero by General Hemmer (Brian Cox, X-MEN UNITED), whose resemblance to George W. Bush is about as subtle as a hammer. He is a warmonger who uses Jim’s brother Stewart (Chris Evans, FANTASTIC FOUR) as a pawn to force Jim to choose between killing all the Terrians or dooming his own species.
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Like Charles Laughton’s THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, Dalton Trumbo’s JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN shares a place in cinema history as the only film directed by an artist known for other endeavors. Trumbo received two Oscars for screenwriting for THE BRAVE ONE and ROMAN HOLIDAY while he was blacklisted. His exile from the credits of cinema ended when producer and star Kirk Douglas gave him a credit on SPARTACUS. Eleven years after that he adapted his own novel with uncredited help from Luis Buñuel into this cult classic. Many will only know the film from its inclusion in Metallica’s first video ONE. For years, it was unavailable outside of the festival and revival house circuit. It is a chilling antiwar film that is disturbing like a great horror film. The powerful imagery will not leave your mind soon after.

Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW) is a young man shipped off to World War I. During a pointless mission, his body is ripped apart by a bomb. He looses all four limbs, his eyes, nose and ears. The only sense that remains is touch. He’s locked in a living nightmare where he is uncertain of day and night and time. He talks with Jesus (Donald Sutherland, SLEUTH), who can’t give him comfort for his condition. Trapped in between dream and reality, he has memories… or are they hallucinations… of his father (Jason Robards, MAGNOLIA), who values his special fishing rod over anything else in the world, because it’s the only thing that makes him special. A nurse (Diane Varsi, PEYTON PLACE) takes pity on him, giving him crucial links to reality.

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This remake of the Korean horror flick A TALE OF TWO SISTERS not only adapts the original for English-speaking audiences, but also tightens the story to its essential elements. Craig Rosenberg, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard are all credited with adapting Ji-woon Kim’s script. What seemed like a labyrinth in the Korean tale is very straightforward in the U.S. version. This quality is both bad and good depending on your point of view. Having seen the original, the good outweighs the bad.

Anna (Emily Browning, LEMONY SNICKET) has just been released from the hospital after a suicide attempt. Her mother died in an explosion and now her nurse Rachael (Elizabeth Banks, W.) has moved into the house with Anna’s father Steven (David Strathairn, GOOD NIGHT. AND GOOD LUCK). Anna’s sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel, THE GRUDGE 2) suspects her father’s new girlfriend of all kinds of devious things. Soon Anna starts seeing the ghost of her dead mother and a trio of children. What really happened the night of the explosion?
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Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist is among the films in competition at Cannes.

Well, the premiere film festival Cannes has announced its lineup and the true-blue film geeks are abuzz. This week columns looks at some of the exciting films playing at the French movie fest, as well as some interesting trailers from the last two weeks and an major oversight on my most anticipated films of the summer list.

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Mental illness, personal rights, personal responsibility, homelessness, the crumbling newspaper business — these are the issues circling this biopic on Los Angeles Times journalist Steve Lopez and homeless musical prodigy Nathaniel Ayers, who is possibly schizophrenic. In real life Lopez won accolades for his columns on Ayers. He wants to help, but what is the best thing to do for Nathaniel?

Lopez (Robert Downey Jr., IRON MAN) meets Ayers (Jamie Foxx, RAY) in a park playing a violin with two strings. In their first rambling conversation, Ayers mentions that he went to Julliard and Lopez’s journalism ears are piqued. Ayers did indeed go to Julliard, but something happened and over the course of the film we learn how Ayers went from the poor neighborhoods of Cleveland to Julliard to the streets of Los Angeles where he lives unaware of reality from moment to moment.
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There is a special sub-category of the inspirational film genre reserved for comebacks. Accomplished people trying to rebuild their reputation. Regain some of their former glory. Success is a matter of degree and some don’t succeed at all. This Weekend’s Film Festival celebrates the comeback on screen with the home entertainment release of THE WRESTLER and FROST/NIXON — two films that seem on the surface to have nothing in common. In the lineup, these tales of a washed up wrestler and disgraced president share the spotlight with once top-notched fighters and a movie star.
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I first saw Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD in college and was struck by its dark look at the Hollywood Dream. Now years later, having lived in Los Angeles for 10 years, the film cuts to the bone. One sees William Holden’s character Joe Gillis driving the streets of Hollywood, a few of the buildings are the same, but everything around them are different. When it comes to the tale of a fledging writer and the aging movie star, the types are the same today only the trappings around them have changed.

Gillis has had some minor success as a writer, but he’s now behind on his rent and about to have his car repossessed. By happenchance, he blows a tire and pulls into what he assumes is an abandoned mansion off of Sunset Blvd. Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson, GREED) is waiting. Her and her dutiful butler Max von Mayerling (Erich von Stroheim, THE GRAND ILLUSION) believe he is a mortician come to deliver the child’s casket for Norma’s dead monkey. It’s a perfect scene to introduce the eccentric star. And when Gillis recognizes her and says, “You used to be big.” She replies, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
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The Notorious B.I.G. Biggie Smalls. He was only 24 when he was gunned down in Los Angeles. He never lived long enough to see his classic second album released. Unlike Nick Broomfield’s documentary, BIGGIE AND TUPAC, this film doesn’t try to solve his murder — this film simply tries to tell his story. Produced by his friend and executive producer Sean “Puffy” Combs, this biopic turns out to be a touching tribute to the fallen star.

Jamal Woolard, aka the rapper Gravy, plays Christopher “Biggie” Wallace in a compelling screen debut. Outside of his size, he doesn’t look like the real Biggie, but he captures the persona perfectly. The story watches how Biggie turned from a solid student to a cold-hearted crack dealer on the streets of Brooklyn. For the young Christopher, played by Biggie’s real life son Christopher Jordan Wallace, ghetto doctors and lawyers didn’t have anything on the wealthy dealers. It’s a typical story of a young man with an absent father being raised by his single mother Voletta (Angela Bassett, WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?).
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What summer films can’t you wait to see?

Anticipation is a funny thing. There are many factors that go into why we get excited about going to see a movie. And as funny as it sounds, whether or not we think the movie will be good is usually not the top criteria. This especially applies to the mood we are in. Summer movies are usually spectacle event films with big stars. But that’s not the only films that come out in the summer. Smaller, quieter films hit art houses between May and August too, but the mega-marketing campaigns of the studios’ tentpole releases overshadow the smaller films. Most people go into a theater hoping the film they’re seeing will be good even if they believe it might not be. Unless you’re being dragged to seeing something, there was at least something that intrigued you.

Why I’m prefacing my list with this statement is because there are films I want to see this summer for various reasons. Some of those reasons have nothing to do with quality. I hope that they are good, but I have my doubts about some of them. And there are some big-watt releases that no matter how hard they sell it to me, I’m not getting pumped up about it. The 30 films I have selected are not what I believe are going to be the 30 best films to be released this summer. I have no clue really if any of them will be good until I see them. But that’s every movie going experience. We take into the theater anticipation, however that may have been formed. I respect critics who try to walk into a movie with as little knowledge of it as possible, because your judgment isn’t clouded, but it’s really not practical in the age of the internet, especially when writing about entertainment is your job. Plus, every non-pro moviegoer is going into a movie with the expectations they’ve been fed by us and the marketers. So I hate to admit it, I’m going with my gut on this list. I’m sure I’ll be disappointed by some, and wish I would have seen others that I left off the list instead, but I’m being honest — the big shiny rollercoaster is sometimes more appealing than reading MOBY DICK.
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