I only managed to see 5 films on Saturday out of an intended 6. First off, I saw a documentary entitled “Secrecy,” which was about the immense amount of classified information that has been created in the wake of 9/11, the validity of it, and it’s effect on national security.
The film was good, but it got a little repetitive at times. Overall though, I give it a lot of credit for maintaining its objective point of view. It managed to detail several instances in history in which the media’s revealing of classified info completely under-minded our government information-gathering-capabilities, but also represented various ways in which our government’s intense secrecy and lack of communication harmed our national security. Apparently, the movie is going get some sort cable screening at some point, plus distribution to the educational circuit.
Second up was another documentary about the last 3 years in the life of cult-music-icon, Wesley Willis, entitled “Wesley Willis’s Joyrides.”
I thought this film was quite good, insightful, & surprisingly touching at times. After the film, the director did a Q & A in which he seemed to get choked up at just talking about Wesley.
After the Q & A, I drove from the Alamo South downtown and met up with my friend Boyd at the Ritz, we saw a film called “The Lost Coast.” It was preceded by a short entitled “Sunlit Shadows,” which I thought was better than the actual movie we watched. “Shadows” was about a loving couple lying around the house all day, but it was done in an eloquent and interesting way, showing scenes narrated by the guy in the relationship, and then re-showing the same scenes, but this time inserting the woman’s thoughts about them. It was a uniquely accurate account of love.
“The Lost Coast” was about a group of old high school friends who wander through San Francisco on Halloween night, two of them are forced to confront their unspoken sexual history. There was the potential for good film in this premise, but unfortunately, this was not it. It wasn’t terrible though.
Next up was one of my most highly anticipated films at this years festival, Harmony Korine’s “Mister Lonely.” The film was surprisingly straight-forward for Korine, but still considerably odd and beautiful. The plot centered on a Michael Jackson impersonator who meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, played by a completely foxy Samantha Morton. The two of them make a connection with one another, and she invites Michael to a commune populated entirely by other impersonators, Charlie Chaplin, Abe Lincoln, Madonna, etc.
I completely loved this movie, and was caught off guard by how optimistic and whimsical it was, plus Harmony Korine was there for a Q & A, that not only included a story about why Austin makes Harmony think of butter, but also, yet another amazing Werner Herzog story.
Because we stayed for the Q & A, we were unable to get into our next film, “Explicit Ills,” but I did see Rosario Dawson walking around. So we killed time until midnight and then watched a movie called “Shuttle,” which was a horror pic about some college students who take a shuttle from the airport that turns into what Wesley Willis would call a Hellride. Man, this movie sucked. As my friend noted, it was a completely unnecessary entry into an already over-saturated genre of torture films, not to mention the whole movie could of ended at any point if the characters characters in it would just make the most obvious & logical decision. This is the second year in a row that the Round Midnight films have been really weak.
Okay that’s all I can type now, I got another movie in 45 minutes, but I’ll catch up sometime in the next day or two
--Popkoff
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