Montevideo Film Festival 2007

[Hakeem]

yeah, I didnt know this existed up until now and Ive lived here most of my life

the festival started last Friday and will run until Sunday. the line up is not that good, and its definitely not fully updated but at least there are a few really new movies and the rest I hadnt seen anyway so its all good

here's what Ive seen so far:

- La Señal (The Signal) - Argentina 2007: this is a film noir set in Buenos Aires 1952 when Eva Peron was about to pass away. kind of slow at times, and towards the end it gets pretty cliched but on the whole is pretty good.
this movies was to be written and directed by the guy that did Nine Queens, but he passed away after filiming his previous movie (The Aura) and so Ricardo Darin (Nine Queens' protagonist) stepped in his place and is also the star of the movie.

- Huo Yuan Jia (Fearless) - China/Hong Kong 2006: hadnt seen this one yet and thought it was very good. could've had more non-weapon fights IMO but I really liked.

- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - USA 2007: Brad Pitt is pretty good as Jesse. you can see how he could've made an amazing job portraying the legend had the movie been about him but its now. you even miss him at parts as his character is not the one that's most on screen. Casey Affleck's Bob Ford is and let me tell you that I did want to see more of Pitt's Jesse James, but not if it meant less Casey Affleck. the guy is excellent here, even more after the assassination happens (no spoiler really). Sam Rockwell and Paul Schneider give great supporting performances as does Sam Shepard playing Jesse's brother Frank. too bad he's only in the movie in the first 20 mins. I still need to see 3:10 To Yuma, but if that one is as good as I hear, at least one of the 2 will play a big part at the Oscars this year.

- December Boys - Australia 2007: coming of age story about 4 young orphans that take a vacation and discover what they want in their lives. Daniel Radcliffe is the oldest one, the one whose character gets to fvck a girl. yep, I was surprised too since that (and nudity which also happens a few times) stuff does not happen in these movies often. so it was a good movie for a sunday afternoon, definitely better than expected.

- The Last Hour - USA 2007: Leonardo DiCaprio's documentary ala Al Gore's An Inconvinient Truth. not as good though. too many experts' faces on screen and not that many numbers and graphs testifying to what they were saying. and when they weren't onscreen it was mediocre national geographic images instead. should've been MUCH better. still informative though.

- Hors de Prix (Priceless) - France 2006: french romantic comedy with the supercute Audrey Tautou. good, fun movie for a date. nudity always a plus.

- Copying Beethoven - USA/Germany 2006: Ed Harris plays Beethoven to a great performance, but the movie is more about Diane Kruger's (Troy's Helen) Anna Holtz. the few musical performances by Harris/Beethoven are greatly done.

- Gone Baby Gone - USA 2007: Ben Affleck co-wrote and directed this adaptation from Dennis Lehane's novel, who also wrote Mystic River, and this guy sure likes to write about missing children as Gone Baby Gone follows the investigation of a missing little girl in Boston (also as in MR) by two private detectives hired by the family of the girl. Ben gives brother Casey a powerful role to play and the little Affleck comes through and how. the guy is perfect. just at the beginning he has a couple scenes where he confronts some people and you can see his greatness already.
the movie as a whole is excellent. the best Ive seen all year so far that will hopefully get some awards this season, mostly for the afflecks.
Michelle Monahan (MI3, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) plays Casey's girlfriend and partner, Morgan Freeman plays the police captain, and Ed Harris plays the lead cop in the case.
great performances all around, the score is really good too (by Harry Gregson-Williams who also scored Spy Game, Man on Fire, Kingdom of Heaven, and many more), and cinematographer John Toll makes for a beautiful looking film.
the script worked great for me, but I can see how some people might not like the multiple, though justified, endings (there's a couple).
all in all a great movie with repeated viewing value which is always good


Next up for me is Michael Moore's Sicko tomorrow. A French drama called Flandres on Friday, Molière (also from France) and George Clooney's Michael Clayton on Saturday. the on Sunday I'll be watching Lights In The Dusk (Finland, 2006) a romanric drama, Ficcion (Spain, 2006), another romantic drama, and finally, closing the festival is La Matinee, the premier of an Uruguayan documentary about our native music, called Murga, part of our Carnaval, which is one of the biggest and popular parts of our society.

so that would be 15 movies in 10 days. thats more than Ive see all year in theatres so far

 

[Yossarian]

Whoa! What an impressively thorough writeup, bro. That looks like an awesome collection of flicks there that you saw. Did you see/read up about the movies that you saw beforehand, or did you just go into them randomly without much advance knowledge of 'em?


From what I've been hearing so far, Affleck the Younger put in an Oscar worthy performance in his role. I don't trust these bitches much, whether they're speaking of someone or something in glowing terms or lambasting them, so I'll definitely have to go check it out soon for myself.

btw, how similar is Gone Baby Gone to Mystic River?

 

[Hakeem]

nah, I didnt read much about them. just knew that Jesse James and Gone Baby Gone had great performances. and Coyping Beethoven for example I didnt even know it existed

now, Gone Baby Gone compared to Mystic River? some things will remind you of MR, especially since they're both sets in Boston and practically in the same neighbourhoods it seems. but other than that its like GBG is the part that wasnt shown in Mystic River about how the police looked for the Tim Robbins character when he was [Mystic River Spoiler?) abducted as a child.
Also, even though Gone Baby Gone's characters are much younger than Mystic River's, the story is still very adult.

if I had to pick a favorite between the two right now, even with just one viewing so far I would go with GBG right now. There were a couple of characters I didnt like in MR like Laura Linney's and while a great performance, I got tired easy of Marcia Gay Harden's.
In GBG there's fewer characters but even though they're not all wholly developed, it works better for the story I think.

 

[Sir Calumn]

Haha, very cool indeed. Look forward to seeing what you think of Sicko.

 

[Hakeem]

just 3 more movies to watch today and the festival will be done.

Sicko was on Thursday and it's good. I went back to read your review Sir_Didier_Drogba and I think you liked it way too much maybe.
I thought it was very well done. Agree that the scenes comparissons with the Canadian, British and French systems were excellent, and very funny. especially the part in England when he was trying to find where to pay for the services only to find a cashier that gave people money for transportation.
The ending in Cuba was fantastic, and I love that it was ou of nowhere cause Cuba hasnt been mentioned before. Not even in the trailers.

Im saying that Sicko is just "good" because I was expecting much more from it. I think it has way too many interviews and not enough confrontation with the HMOs. He went the day of showing how much better is everywhere else, instead of going against the people in charge. maybe take some of those that have been wronged over to the offices of the CEOs or something.

I havent seen Lake Of Fire yet, Tony Kaye's (American History X) take on abortion, nor In The Shadow Of The Moon (about the NASA Apollo missions), so for now Sicko is the frontrunner as best documentary of the year but Im not sure if its going to hold on to it (:/)