INDEPENDENT FILM NIGHT

This first event was held at the posh Orleans theaters - we arrived just in the nick of time and quickly found a seat in the dark. We'd already decided to split up since I'd already seen two of the evening's six choices at Sundance, which only left four and since there was two start times we figured if we split up we'd have hit the whole lot. As it turned out this was the only chance we would get to divide and conquer for the whole week. So off I went to the Scottish charmer On a Clear Day and Adam ducked into Confetti.

My first film experience at Showest was a winning import shot in Glasgow Scotland - a dramedy in the tradition of The Full Monte, Kinky Boots and Waking Ned Devine. I really enjoyed the film and in just a moment I'll run it down for you. The thing is, when I came out of the movie everything had changed, while I watched On A Clear Day the whole place had undergone a wonderful transformation. First off I could hear a live band belting out some cool cocktail jazz and my senses were further stirred by the aroma of gourmet food. I was starving and loaded up a heavy plate as if I never expected to see food again.

There's a strange part in Donnie Darko (you remember that "strange" part in Donnie Darko - right?) where Drew Barrymore Donny's newly fired teacher has written the words Cellar Door on the blackboard and proceeds to explain to him about how some genius had made the determination that Cellar Door was the most beautiful and ingenious two word combination in the English language. Even then I scoffed, "Miss Barrymore obviously your boy overlooked the two word combination that can kick Cellar Door's ass any day of the week, because any fool could tell you a far more glorious tandem term by any stretch of the imagination is "Open Bar."

ON A CLEAR DAY (PG-13)
Starring Peter Mullan, Billy Boyd, Sean McGinley, Brenda Blethyn
Directed By Gaby Dellal

The film begins with the main character Frank Redmond (Peter Mullan) clearing out his office. After 28 years working for the same shipbuilder, the 55-year-old grandfather of two finds himself laid off (or made redundant - as they say across the pond). Without work for the first time that he can rightly remember, Frank is knocked for a loop and really has no idea what to do with himself. His friends rally round him (he's a man's man and has always been someone looked up to by his mates and co-workers). Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings) plays the loopy girl-crazy Danny - on for plenty of comic relief. Ron Cook plays Norman a timid man beset with myriad phobias, and Sean McGinley is his oldest friend, the cynical Eddie.

Try as they may, they fail to offer Frank much comfort or direction. The four of them regularly go for a swim and an off-handed remark gives Frank the most cockeyed notion that's entered his head in his entire life. Desperate to re-establish his self confidence he starts thinking about swimming the English Channel.
He keeps it to himself for a while as he starts training in earnest and showing up at the library to bone up on the whole subject. When his friends begin to figure it out, they, of course, think he's gone right 'round, but they end up getting swept up into the idea - particularly a friend who runs a fish and chip shop Chan (Benedict Wong). Chan takes up the responsibility of learning all there is to know about timing and the tides and so forth.

Aside from his unemployment, Frank's biggest problems are on the home front. Though his marriage is far from loveless, there's been a gulf growing there of late and his keeping all these secrets is only putting more space between he and his wife. What Frank doesn't know is that his wife has been studying to become a bus driver, and she fears that he'll perceive this as her attempt to take over the role of breadwinner - when in fact she began her training months before he was laid off. The whole issue is compounded 10 fold by the fact that his son Rob (Jamie Sives) is a stay-at-home Dad, watching over their two young boys while his wife brings home the bacon working for the unemployment service.

Rob's decision to eschew a career for the time being has become a major bone of contention between Father and Son and everyone walks around on egg shells any time the two are around each other. This is really a terrific film, smart, sensitive, a lot of good laughs, but I quite honestly have to knock it down a full grade for the inclusion of the biggest sentimental cliché of all time. Even though it is feathered well into the story and comes into play nicely during the Channel swim. It turns out that Rob had a brother who had drown about the time the boys were at the same age as Frank's Grand children are now. Obviously father and son rarely speak of it and when they do it's used to hurt each other. Both imagine that the other secretly blames him for the tragedy. It's not that the plot-point isn't knitted well into the story, I guess it's just a scenario that we've seen in various permutations too many times before. Other than this and a few minor quibbles toward the end, however, I really enjoyed this film.

Blethyn is perfect as the Mother caught in the cross-fire of everyone's troubles and injured feelings. She's still crazy about her deeply principled man, who has kept his rugged muscularity and strong-jawed good-looks well into middle age. Her problems begin to mount as she continues to fail the field tests necessary to get her bus drivers license and only has one chance left. One night things come to a head when they both confront each other about the secrets they've kept from each other and the resultant row leaves a dark shadow over them both. Frank is so shaken that he calls together his friends (who have really come together as "team Frank" - it's infused a sense of purpose in all of them so imagine their displeasure when he tells them all that he's decided to call it all off.

One part of the film that flirts with being a bit too manipulative, involves a group of handicapped kids who occasionally show up at the pool while Frank is training. One boy in particular is terribly gripped by Palsy, so much so that he can barely walk the few feet from his wheel chair to the edge of the pool. Once he dives in, his daily goal is to swim the length of the pool one time and given his desperately unorthodox technique it is all he can do to make it. But each day he manages and lets go a good whoop like he'd just won the Olympic gold. Frank befriends the boy and one day the kid asks him why he's not training like usual and the look on his face when Frank confesses his decision to give up, is the one thing that could cause Frank to change his mind and that he does.

The rest of the film plays out about like you would imagine, except for one twist at the end that really ratchets up the emotional impact. During the course of the film we learn that each of the men involved in the Channel Swim are wrestling with their own little problems and the way they are all tied up in a neat bow the day they learn that Frank has decided to resume his big swim is a bit of a pat device that along with the drowning backstory made things a bit too corny and sentimental, but certainly wasn't enough to put to big a dent in my enthusiasm for this film.

Rating - B

HARD CANDY (R)
Starring Patrick Wilson, Ellen Page and Sandra Oh
Directed by David Slade

Before I went in to see Hard Candy I was warned by a couple of guys that I was chatting with that the film would ruin my night. It's too intense, too in your face, too . . . awful. Since it was either this film or a depressing documentary on the deplorable state of the environment starring Al Gore called An Inconvenient Truth, I opted for awful, in my face intensity.

As Hard Candy begins we are tight on a chat room conversation going on between two individuals her are allegedly a 14 year old girl and a 32 year old man. Reluctantly the young girl agrees to meet the man at a cafe and after a bit of lively banter in which both are equally charmed and impressed by the other, Hayley (Ellen Page) finds herself in the well appointed apartment of the 32 year old fashion photographer Jeff (Patrick Wilson). A veteran stage actor Wilson took on a particularly tough role as a married Mormon homosexual in Angels in America. Page is indeed a revelation playing the bright and perky prey of what we assume is a pedifile who's managed to lure the perfect victim into his web. Page has the wide-eyed wholesome look of a young Ally Sheedy with the coy mystery of Natalie Portman in Beautiful Girls.

As Hayley explores Jeff's place she becomes interested in his studio as well as some of his sexy subjects who appear in provocative poses. After a few drinks, Hayley has become emboldened enough to suggest that Jeff take a few shots of her just for fun. Just as she starts to get playful with her poses, rending her tight sports top and egging him on, Jeff begins to feel strange and is soon unconscious. When he awakes he is tied firmly to a chair and is soon being frankly interrogated by his young guest who believes him to be a pedifile and possibly a murderer.

Jeff is still reeling from the effects of the tranquilizer and is too thick-tongued to mount much of a defense. For her part Hayley seems to know every detail about Jeff's life, former girlfriends and an acquaintance with a young girl who'd gone missing. Though he seems to have ready and credible alibis for all of her accusations, she maintains a smug position of power, both because she has the drop on him and appears to know things about him that have him visibly shaken.

Hard Candy is for all intents and purposes a two-person character study that would probably work quite well as a play. Director David Slade never lets your interest wane, by keeping the action close and intimate with tight head shots and by establishing Hayley as a loose cannon of an avenging lioness capable of inflicting torture both physical and emotional on her helpless captive. She's studied this scenario down to every last detail - aware, for example that his screams will go unheard as his only close neighbors are out of town. After an unsuccessful hunt for the child porn or perhaps evidence of his involvement with the missing young girl she leaves him alone to do a thorough search and by sheer will power and brute strength manages to pull a hand loose from it's binding and untie the other. Still tied as he is to a rolling chair, he manages to get his hands on his pistol.

At this point the film becomes something of a cat and mouse affair, but Hayley always seems to be one step ahead and once again subdues her captive. This time when he awakens he is bound to a table in a posture that suggests the likelihood of torture. Throughout, Hayley stays in character as the playful matter-of-fact kid, precocious and hell bent on avenging all those who may or may not have suffered at his hand. Right away it becomes clear that she intends to castrate her hysterical prisoner and sets about doing so with a humorous play by play. She even sets up one of his video cameras so he can watch every gruesome detail of the procedure.

Through all this Jeff tries any number of ploys to extricate himself from the nightmare. He offers her money, offers to confess to anything she pleases and when these measures fail, he attempts psychological warfare - all of which Hayley seems to have anticipated and has prepared responses for. Slade does a nice job of allowing the tension to build by degree and never allowing the proceedings to become far-fetched or implausible. As a humane measure she applies a bag of ice to his crotch to mitigate the pain of her barbaric designs. I'll leave you to wonder whether or not Hayley carries out the castration - I'm a professional damnit and I'm not about to play the spoiler when it comes to a do it yourself home castration.

There are plenty more twists and strange turns as we work our way to a most bizarre conclusion, but I will say that during the final act that both writer and director let the picture get away from them to some extent. Too many of the things that happen toward the finale lose their credibility by being to contrived and implausible. Still Hard Candy is a fascinating and most unexpected film that remains suspenseful and daring throughout - though the last 15 minutes require way too much suspension of disbelief, it's not enough to lessen the visceral punch that this film packs. From the word go Hard Candy will have you in it's grasp and that's enough to give it a great big recommendation.

Rating - B

For a complete run down of the nights adventures click over to Adam's report for much more - as well as a review of Confetti, a mockumentary about elaborate weddings (one of them a nudist affair) that takes it's cues from Christopher Guest's films i.e. Best In Show.

Though a bit out of sequence (this is a film I saw on Wednesday), due to the incredible volume of writing necessary to adequately cover this entire event I find myself pressed for space. So I'm putting GK and the gang here, they seem like easy goin' folks - I'm sure they wouldn't mind. Ladies and Gentleman Robert Altman and Garrison Keillor.

PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (NR)
Starring Garrison Keillor, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly
Director: Robert Altman

Prairie Home Companion in a strange sort of way is the bucolic version of Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Both are very entertaining mixtures of music, comedy and behind the scenes docudrama. Of course PHC is sort of a televised version of Garrison Keillor's venerable radio program that's been on the air for 31 years and counting. Filmed at St. Paul's Fitzgerald theater in Keillor's home state of Minnesota, the film (written by Keillor and Ken LaZebnik) imagines a tearful final show that has outlived it's unique niche and is at last being bought and replaced by a soulless Texas corporation. If you want to read a leftist agenda into Keillor's choice of villainous state feel free.

Though there is a certain amount of the overlapping dialogue one would expect from an Altman film, it's fairly unnecessary and seems forced at times. Still the top drawer cast is so obviously having a ball doing this that you mostly forget to notice such trifling matters. Streep and Tomlin play Rhonda and Yolanda Johnson the remaining members of a one-time four member family troupe. Their presence and easy interplay gives the film a calming center that grounds some of the more troubling and strange things that have suddenly befallen the usually sedate set.

One of which is Yolanda (Streep's) troubled daughter Lola (a subdued Lindsay Lohan) whose penchant for dark poetry and fascination with suicide is a bit of a thorn in Yo's side, but she seems to take it in stride as though her show business life has annured her to such things to some extent. In fact everyone treats the matter as the sort of transient phase that they've all seen in one form or another many times before. Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly certainly steal the show as a pair of country crooners with a tendency toward one-upsmanship. Toward the end of the second act they tie into a song that is nothing but a series of semi-dirty jokes that goes on for quite a while, but I think I speak for everyone when I say it was way too brief.

The typical hard day's night is intruded upon by dark and wondrous forces, which security director Guy Noire (Kevin Kline) picks up on in his Chandleresque manner. Something strange is afoot and this represents a challenge for the typically bored would-be gum-shoe. Death herself is to visit the set on this most poignant and bittersweet night, come in the form of an angel in a white dress (Virginia Madsen) who moves in and around the set, noticed by some and invisible to most. The personification of corporate evil pull up in a limo in the person of Tommy Lee Jones who has come to inspect his new property and perhaps out of respect for the radio institution his presence spells the end of. He watches the show anonymously from a balcony booth and seems ruefully bemused by what he sees.

A randy old cowboy singer who regularly plays nasty with one of the programs wardrobe women dies in the throws of ecstasy and the woman in white is there to ferry his soul to where it belongs. But her attention is focused upon the dark presence in the balcony. These whimsical plotpoints aren't much more than innocuous distraction from the music and merriment on stage and never add up to much but some sort of camp value. Keillor proves to be an ample anchor for this movie version of his life. His easy stage presence and regular guy singing voice gives the film what it gave the radio program for all those years. A sly intelligent wit hiding behind a low key demeanor, who knows just when to pull the string of a yarn - comfortable in his role as Midwestern minister of mirth and myth.

Horribly conspicuous in it's absence is the beloved Tales from Lake Woebegone, an omission that must have either been tied up in trademark travails or deemed out of step with the musical mystery of the movie. A strong hunch leans toward the latter - I'll have to get Guy Noire right on that.

Grade B-