Movies

Caught two LA Film Festival movies this weekend. It was nice to be in the film festival scene for a little bit again and I was lucky enough to avoid the atrocious and brain-deadening boredom endemic of the general film festival movie experience.

COLD WEATHER came recommended as an indie-sherlock holmes style mystery. And about 1/2 of the movie was exactly that. It took awhile to get going, but eventually the story became a mystery when a young man with the help of co-worker and his sister (with whom he lives) tries to figure out the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend who ostensibly came to town for "work." It took place in Portland and the first act was quite slow and gave no indication of being a detective movie. The director lingered on shots for an impossibly long time. Someone next to me somehow found humor in a big wide shot of the ocean with our two characters eating sandwiches as a seagull flew around screen. I did not. Nothing happened in the full minute this image was on screen. There was one breathtaking shot of a bridge with a slow zoom and two characters standing on it. But this is not a photography shoot, it is a movie and you must sneak in the artistry in the action...not in addition to it. The movie finally picks up when the detective elements start going and finally our heroes are getting somewhere in the mystery and BAM - the movie suddenly ends. It was as-if the movie ended at the end of the 2nd act. We never find out what was in the briefcase, we never find out who the bad guys are, what they are up to, how our missing girl got involved, or why she "disappeared" in the first place. The movie was basically a good second act with a typically indie-boring-we're-in-love-with-the-red camera-and-the-indie-images-it-produces-and-our-actors-facial-expressions first act. The filmmakers said, "we were interested in capturing how real people behave," in the Q&A. Why? If I wanted to see "real" people, I'd watch a documentary or my own goddamn life. Real people behaving is not drama. Sorry, it isn't. I like my drama straight. Still, 1/2 a good movie is pretty damn impressive and there was talent displayed both from a writing and directing standpoint. The best shot of the movie is a dolly around a library stack as the brother and sister seek out a baseball statistics books. This shot is superior to the bridge shot as it involves character action, coupled with a lovely camera movie and big curves of space on screen.

Hatley's portrait of Levon Helm does is in no need of a public musings dissection. Let me just say Levon's performance of Atlantic City made me want to yell out in celebration and I wish I had. I know you're not supposed to do such things in a movie, but it was for a moment, it was a concert for me. Very good cutting in this scene between two cameras, the close low def video footage mixed with the wider, high definition video. Levon's philosophy of life is not the same as mine, and yet I'm very much glad folks like he exist.