Did you like that tease at the end of the last post? Let’s revisit...
Sunday was lovely, I could've stayed inside drinking my morning coffee, but instead chose to sit in the sun and watch the first two movies at the Broadway line up while I waited for mine to start.
Mine was “Adam’s Apples” a Danish film about a neo-nazi on probation who is to stay at a rural church with a minister who is in denial about his life, a former tennis player who was in prison for kidnap and rape and a middle eastern immigrant who committed revenge armed robbery on one particular oil company’s mini-marts, because he’s political and accuses the company of stealing his father’s land. There’s also the pregnant woman who ends up at the church because she doesn’t know what else to do.
Adam, at the minister Ivan’s behest, sets himself the task of making an apple pie with apples from the tree in the churchyard, as soon as the apples are ripe. There’s a reason why Adam’s bible keeps falling open to the Book of Job. There are crows, worms, whatever can happen to a tree, forced acknowledgment of the denied tragedy of Ivan’s life, an interesting misreading of Job and more as Adam tries to crack Ivan’s cheerful faith.
I don’t like the characters in “Adam’s Apples” but I found that I cared about them in this just short of tragic comedy.
I wasn’t really please with the Shorts Program II, a series of documentary shorts. None of them were bad, as has happened in past shorts programs, I just wasn’t really engaged despite it all. The best of the bunch was “Rape for Who I Am” which discusses the instance of lesbians in South Africa being raped for being gay and the lesbian community’s efforts to draw attention to these rapes as hate crimes. The other one I really liked was “No Umbrella -- Election Day in the City” about problems with the 2004 election in Ohio and the efforts of one octogenarian councilwoman to get more voting boots at a very busy district. I wouldn't want to argue with her, she reminded me of some very fierce older women I love and respect.
This has been one of my best Sundance weekends in years. I hope the rest of the fest continues on the same note.
Do you remember “Kiss of the Spider Woman”? It’s hard to believe that Nick Nolte is the same actor, only the quality of his performance is a giveaway.
Nolte plays Ray, a drunk, ill, part-time high school umpire in “Off the Black” (it’s a baseball term see the movie or look it up) Trevor Morgan plays David, a promising pitcher whose team doesn’t make the playoffs because of Ray’s call. In a fit of adolescent vengeance David and two friends vandalize Ray’s house. David gets caught and told if he cleans up the police will not be called and if goes to Ray’s 40th high school reunion pretending to be his son David’s father will not be called about a broken car window.
The friendship that develops between Ray and David is like a warped ideal of the father-son relationship. Maybe more uncle-nephew since they can talk more openly than most parents and children I have known. After all it’s Ray and not David’s father who takes David fishing for the first time. David’s relationships with his father and his sister are not explored deeply, but it is not ignored.
This one will make you laugh and made grown men cry. This is a chick movie for guys, and that’s not bad.
I ended the evening with “Little Miss Sunshine” which I read this morning (Monday) has been picked up for something like $10 million.
It’s the story of an extremely messed up family. They almost make the non-related family in “Adam’s Apples” look good. There Olive the seven-year-old wanna be beauty queen (who actually looks like a very cute little girl and doesn’t have that creepy plastic look), her teen-age brother Dwight who hasn’t spoken to anyone in nine months, Uncle Frank who is just out of the hospital after trying to commit suicide, dad Richard a failing motivational speaker, Richard’s heroin-snorting porn-loving father (Alan Arkin) who is working with Olive on her talent routine and Sheryl the mom who’s trying to hold the family together.
The family climbs into the VW bus for a trip from Albuquerque to LA when Olive’s regional second place is moved up in the Little Miss Sunshine contest due to a scandal with the regional winner possibly involving diet pills. Clutches and more die during the trip, but the family makes it to the contest just in time.
This film ends the way it should, rather than the way a main stream movie might have it end. Let’s just say, Grandpa is a heck of a choreographer.
I did like “Little Miss Sunshine,” but “No. 2” and “Off the Black” are my best of show so far.
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