#166 - Face to Face (2011)

This was touted at the film festival as a 12 Angry Men-style drama, so it had a lot of expectation to live up to.  The film is based on a new system in Australia (where the movie's set) where, after a crime is committed, the parties involved, including many who are directly or indirectly related to the act, are brought together to basically talk through the entire story in the presence of an adjudicator.  This film is based on actual case notes of one of these processes.

The "defendant" is a young man with a short fuse who gets fired from his job and, in retaliation, rams his employer's car several times in his own driveway, giving him whiplash.  Also present are several other people who were affected by the incident, from workmates to family and friends.  What follows delves deeply into the issue at hand, as well as who was in what way responsible for what transpired (and with a cast of only about 10, everyone's involved somehow).  Great screenplay, decent acting, and great pacing combine for a pretty terrific movie that is one of my favorites of the festival.

Score: 9/10

#165 - The Guard (2011)

Definitely one of my favorites of the festival.  The Guard is an Irish-set drama focusing on local lawman Brendan Gleeson and American FBI agent Don Cheadle as they try to track down a shipment of cocaine that is suspected to land in Ireland.  Gleeson's very much a do-it-my-own-way kind of enforcement officer, which doesn't tend to gel with Cheadle and some of the other officers.  Of course, we the audience love him, his offbeat sense of humor, and his ways of doing things.  All this is acted supremely well by the terrific Mad-Eye Moody Brendan Gleeson.

The movie is well-acted, well-written, and really funny.  So much so that the whole international drug trafficking plot sometimes gets forgotten (for all the right reasons).  Do go see this film!

Score: 9/10

#164 - Hesher (2010)

I really didn't enjoy this movie that much, to be honest.  The basic premise is as follows: young T.J. breaks a window in the development where Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is squatting, forcing Hesher to move.  He decides to "move in" with T.J. and his dad (Rainn Wilson) - who just lost their mother/wife - and T.J.'s grandma (Piper Laurie).  Hesher is a metalhead thrasher-type kid who spreads chaos where he goes, doing everything unapologetically.  Along the way, we also meet store clerk Nicole (Natalie Portman) who T.J. becomes enamored with.

The consistency of the movie is commendable, as are the last 20 or so minutes which made me appreciate the film more than I did for the other majority of it.  If you like seriously offbeat and somewhat morbid comedies, then you may appreciate this one.  Or, like me, maybe you won't.

Score: 5.5/10

#163 - The Women on the 6th Floor (2010)

Stemming the tide of enjoying each movie at the festival less than the one that came before it, The Women on the 6th Floor was a very sweet comedy about a group of Spanish maids who, well, guess....  Early in the film, the niece (Maria) of one of the maids comes to live in the apartment and gets a job housekeeping for the wealthy Jouberts who live below.  M. Joubert quickly finds out that the loves the way the maids live and goes out of his way to help them when he can (which somewhat surprises others).  What follows is at times predictable, but overall an enjoyable film about real living vs. fake living and the bosses vs. the "bossed".

Score: 8/10

#162 - L'amour fou

Really a disappointment for me, since, in addition to the main story of the relationship between Yves Saint-Laurent and his partner of 50+ years Pierre Bergé, I was really hoping for a lot more about the rise of the fashion empire that YSL helped create and maintain for so many years.  Instead, in addition to the story about their relationship (told almost exclusive through the words of Bergé), the story focused almost exclusively on the art collection the pair amassed throughout the years.  Not really the kind of creation I was hoping to see, and as such, I was less interested in the movie than I could have been.

Not to mention, even though the movie was not even 100 minutes long, the amount of time the camera spent lingering over a raindropped window or panning back and forth over the immense art collection made it seem much much longer.  And for a documentary that was mostly a pair of interviews with Bergé, it felt very long, indeed.

Score: 5/10

#161 - Everything Must Go (2010)

Of the four movies I saw on Wednesday, this was my least favorite.  It stars Will Ferrell as a man who, in the span of about four minutes, loses his job, his wife, his house, his car, basically his life, and has to try to get things back in order, with the help of a young neighbor boy, and new neighbor Rebecca Hall.  Well, kinda.  The movie feels really inorganic (not to mention, I tend not to enjoy movies where everything that can possibly go wrong seems to, in a very short amount of time, leaving the viewer with a sense of hopelessness and disbelief that things could actually work out) and while the acting (Ferrell, Hall, Laura Dern, and Christopher Jordan Wallace, the son of the late Notorious B.I.G.) is terrific, it falls under the weight of an impossible story.  A little disappointing, especially since it fell a little short of expectations.

Score: 5.5/10

#160 - Higher Ground (2011)

Me, see a movie based on a story about a born-again Christian?

Sure, if it's directed by and stars Vera Farmiga!

Yes, there's a lot of Jesus in this film about a woman who finds and loses her faith a couple of times, but there is a good bit of humor and some great acting (especially Farmiga, and Dagmara Dominczyk, who plays her friend Annika) that keeps the movie from becoming too cloying and unwatchable.  Still, the story becomes somewhat predictable and falls a little flat, at times, but is a much more successful film than it could have been.

Score: 6.5/10

#159 - Battle for Brooklyn (2010)

I'm so fucking glad that they decided to build a new arena for the New Jersey Nets in the middle of Brooklyn.

This is basically the premise behind the struggles of a few staunch Brooklynites who didn't want to see the area they live in turn into a giant construction job.  Certainly this is a great movie for all you activists and socially aware citizens (so, like, no one I know. Kidding) or really anyone who hates big corporations.

Score: 7.5/10

#158 - Incendies (2010)

So far, this is my favorite film of the festival (if you don't count The Empire Strikes Back, since it's not a newer release).  It follows a set of twins who are given a mission by their mother who has just passed.  The mission is to find the father they've never met, and the brother they never knew they had.  Their journey takes them from Canada to Israel, where their mother is originally from, and they proceed to learn all about their heritage.  (But it's a lot less boring than that.)  Biggest complaint: its slow pace.  Still a pretty great movie that I look forward to seeing again.

Score: 9/10

#157 - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

It's been awhile, I know, but between going to California for work, going to New York with friends, and nearly getting The Pneumonia, I haven't had much of a July.  Also, this is my summer, so keeping up be damned.  However, thanks to the TCFF (Traverse City Film Festival), I have had the opportunity to catch up quite a bit.  Here is the Reader's Digest version of the I've seen so far at the festival:

#157 - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

The best of all the Star Wars movies (if you discount the Wellesian Attack of the Clones) has the best plot (come on, we all know that Vader is Luke's father, but it was a big deal back in 1980), introduces the bad ass Yoda (and Lando Calrissian, too, I guess) and has the coolest, hope-filled ending.  This movie will remain in my top 10 of all time probably forever.  It also brings back fond memories of spending time with my mom, because she let me stay up and finish it when it was on TV back in the day (on a school night, no less!)

Score: 10/10

P.S. I've decided to make each one a separate entry so I can keep my stats (scores and years released) in order.