Here's the thing about several films screening at the 10th annual Newport Beach Film Festival,
which opens Thursday, April 23, and continues through April 30: many
entries have been shown at earlier festivals in New York, Los Angeles
and elsewhere. Since the Weekly is part of a chain with papers in those
towns and others, we can check out how critics there felt about some of
the repeat pictures. So, to joining our “10 for the Tenth”–reviews of some of the best festival
features, documentaries and shorts–we add 5 More NBFF Recommendations (and 4 Other Ones):
PRODIGAL SONS Like Jonathan Caouette's 2003 Tarnation, Kimberly Reed's Prodigal Sons shows that DIY cinematic autobiographies can be much more than just indulgent grad-school-thesis navel gazes. Sons
has all the pitfalls of the genre–self-realization, troubled past,
lack of structure–and yet it transcends them thanks to Reed's ability
to get out of the way and let a great story tell itself. The film
begins as a record of Reed's return to Helena, Montana, where she grew
up as Paul McKerrow, a co-captain of the high-school football team,
only to later undergo successful gender-reassignment surgery and start
a new life back east. Reed's homecoming is upstaged by her adopted
brother, Marc, who's still jealous of Kim/Paul's childhood popularity
and confused by the fact that his brother is now his sister. Marc, who
suffers from the effects of a massive head injury in his youth, then
finds out he's the biological grandson of Orson Welles and Rita
Hayworth. And this is still only the first half-hour. While Reed's doc
lacks the wild iMovie exuberance of Tarnation, she has a patient eye, and this is what ultimately makes the rough but entirely captivating Prodigal Sons
a true documentary rather than a freak show, personal essay or rant.
Reed keeps the camera rolling as her filmed diary develops into a
portrait of an entire family–one that's bizarre, unbelievable and,
deep down, not that different from most others. (James C. Taylor) Edwards Island 4, Fashion Island, 999 Newport Center Dr., Newport Beach, (949) 640-1218. Mon., April 27, 5:30 p.m.
flamboyantly charismatic fashion designer Jay McCarroll
still hadn't launched his first clothing line, the pressure of being
internationally famous for being famous playing hell on his nerves and
insecurities. Beginning production then, doc filmmakers Michael
Selditch and Rob Tate's charming and unexpectedly perceptive
portrait-cum-procedural proves the DIY-authentic corrective to Unzipped, a warts-and-all chronicle of McCarroll's year-long preparation for his inaugural show at New York Fashion Week.
Hardly a glamorous daily existence, McCarroll–a stressed-out but
good-humored teddy bear whose naked sensitivities balance his
ego–scours Chinatown for cheap material, milks as much as he can out of
hemorrhaging budgets and unpaid employees, attempts to micro-manage
when outsourced work gets botched, and squabbles with his publicist
over creative compromises. What truly elevates it all is how the
directors (deliberately appearing on-screen at times) subtly address
our perceptions of filmed “reality,” from their even-handed vNritN here
to the more grossly manufactured confines of reality TV, a medium
McCarroll is quick to call “vulgar.” Like Soderbergh's two-part Che–yes, I'm making this comparison–Eleven Minutes
is less about its subject and more about formalist processes (both
McCarroll and the filmmakers'), and shouldn't exist as a stand-alone
without viewers having experienced its other half, Project Runway. (Aaron Hillis) Edwards Island 1, (949) 640-1218. Sun., April 26, 4 p.m.
]
IDIOTS AND ANGELS Cult animator Bill Plympton's hand-penciled expressionism is most
recognizable from his shorts, likely because his deadpan,
spatial-distorting sight gags often can't sustain momentum in feature
form, almost by design. Yet his beautifully creepy fifth film somehow
transcends this limitation and proves his most fully realized yet–a
grim fairy-tale comedy, told without a word of dialogue, about a
truculent businessman who discovers angelic wings sprouting from his
back. The mean bastard undergoes a spiritual awakening as his new
appendages thwart his every transgression, a humiliating
rise-fall-and-rise tale that affects a bar owner and his salsa-dancing
wife, a conniving surgeon and a town full of arson victims. Less
concerned with gags than nimble storytelling and wide-screen aesthetics
(every brooding corner of the frame is blotted in monochromatic noir
hues), Plympton mines elegance from the utterly gonzo. (AH). Edwards Island 4, (949) 640-1218. Sun., April 26, 4:30 p.m.
A QUIET LITTLE MARRIAGE Despite a wobbly third act, A Quiet Little Marriage
is that rare indie drama that has something meaningful to say about
matrimony–specifically, how a marriage's early years can be pivotal
in determining its future. Olive (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) and Dax (Cy
Carter) seem to be a contented young couple until Olive suggests having
a baby, which Dax was pretty sure they had already decided against.
With a lovely understated style, writer-director Mo Perkins interweaves
the pair's building tension with the agony of ailing parents and
shiftless siblings, highlighting the unforeseen family factors that
impose their will on any long-term relationship's hopes for a happy
ending. (Tim Grierson) Edwards Island 7, (949) 640-1218. Sat., April 25, 8 p.m.
THE WORLD WE WANT “We the People: Project Citizen” is a U.S.-sponsored program that
encourages young people all over the world to become community
activists–rabble-rousers, in effect. In this inspiring film, director
Patrick Davidson tracks eight high-school-age groups from around the
globe who each chose one burning issue in their community and then hit
the streets to fix the problem, by organizing petitions and getting in
the face of local officials. Their work, much of it astonishingly
effective, includes an effort to get the Russian government to regulate
out-of-control public gambling, and a 300-kid street march demanding
clean water for a Senegalese village. Heroes all. (Chuck Wilson). Edwards Island 5, (949) 640-1218. Tues., April 28, 3 p.m.
THESE FILMS ARE NEITHER RECOMMENDED NOR UNRECOMMENDED:
AUTO-MORPHOSIS Documentarian Harrod Blank is an admittedly eccentric fellow who has a
thing for “art cars.” I mean, he really has a thing for art cars. These
are not classics maintained to factory specifications or cherried out
street rods. These are (generally) used hunks of rust adorned with all
kinds of crap. The so-called “mobile works of art” include a German American
gift shop owner's rolling hamburger, a telephone on wheels driven by a normal office guy who
transforms himself into a costumed telecom superhero and an ode to Satan-worshipping owned by a Northwest punkette who hated
everyone before people on the street approached her genuinely intrigued by her late-model sedan. It's clear attention, not art,
drives these folks. Or maybe that drives all artists. (Matt Coker) Edwards Island 5, (949) 640-1218. Sun., April 26, 3:15 p.m.
BEAUTY OF THE FIGHT
Photographer John Urbano explains in his narration to his documentary
on Barraza and El Chorrillo, two impoverished barrios that remain
decimated by the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, that he had been
encouraged by a friend to snap pictures there. Urbano displays these on
film and in an accompanying book, which describe the fight as the three
great competitions in Barraza and El Chorrillo: boxing, cockfighting
and the daily struggle to survive. But the documentary could use less
of Urbano, his motivations and his feelings about the people in the
streets. It's fine that Urbano loves the vivid colors, is anguished
that once happy souls have been overtaken by dejection and can
recognize the incongruity of a boxing gym next to a church next to
cockfighting rings. Just show us! There's no need to verbally telegraph
your punches. (MC) Edwards Island 3, (949) 640-1218. Mon., April 27, 3:30 p.m.
THE DRUMS INSIDE YOUR CHEST
A magician emcee (Rob Zabrecky) and seven poets/spoken word types
(Buddy Wakefield, Beau Sia, Bucky Sinister, Mindy Nettifee, Derrick
Brown, Jeffrey McDaniel and Amber Tamblyn) are captured on- and
off-stage at a sold out, one-night-only Los Angeles performance. After
watching the first round of monologues, often accompanied by a
musician, each performer seems uniquely engaging, brimming with keen
observations and interesting word play. But it starts to wear on you in
the later rounds captured by director Stephen Latty. Still, those who
regularly attend local poetry readings, who have probably seen many of
these artists, should get a kick out of watching them on the big
screen. A special berets off to Tamblyn, the event's “curator” and an
actress you may have seen in Joan of Arcadia, for staging something like this without Henry Rollins off the bill. (MC) Regency Lido, 3459 Via Lido, Newport Beach, (949) 673-8350. Sun., April 26, 6 p.m.
FOOD FIGHT No one gets a pie in the face in Chris Taylor's cheeky documentary;
instead, the director argues that the nation has been getting Twinkies
and other processed food shoved down its gullets for decades. In the
wake of books like Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma (whose author, Michael Pollan, is one of many talking heads here), Food Fight
pits organic farmers against the Industrial Agriculture Complex. While
Taylor's film serves up the history and politics of how America eats in
a breezy, amusing way, its extended, hagiographic portraits of
celebrity chefs (including Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck and Suzanne
Goin) are a bit hard to swallow. (JCT) Peter N Mary Muth Interpretive Center, 2301 University Dr., Newport Beach, (949) 923-2290. Sun., April 26, 1:15 p.m.; Edwards Island 3, (949) 640-1218. Tues., April 28, 4 p.m.
Tickets
are $8-$12 per screening. Galas, parties and receptions generally cost
extra. Call (949) 253-2880 or log on to newportbeachfilmfest.com for
tickets and other festival details. More reviews, news and on-the-scene
reporting from NBFF is forthcoming on ocweekly.com.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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