Here are some highlights from press launch & my first speedy trek through the lineup.

* If you have tickets to the sold-out opening night presentation of Much Ado About Nothing, well done! The movie is a lot of fun. If you don’t, I have no actual information except that on Twitter, SIFF said to stay tuned for an update on May 2nd. So, good luck!

* Closing night is Sophia Coppola’s The Bling Ring, screening at Cinerama. I am ridiculously excited about this, and you should be too.

* We already knew about the evening with Kyle MacLachlan, a q&a with a screening of the pilot of Twin Peaks (my socks are on fire!), but SIFF is also bringing acclaimed director Peter Greenaway to town to talk about the death of cinema, which should definitely be interesting.

* Last month, SIFF announced their African Pictures program, which looks great. The two films I’m most excited about in that are both from South Africa: Fanie Fourie’s Lobola (and that was even before I knew there would be a party following the screening!) & The African Cypher.

* Other films-with-parties that are probably worth a look-in: the new film from Lynn Shelton, Touchy Feely, is Renton’s opening night & Twenty Feet From Stardom (about backup singers!) is the Centerpiece Gala.

* From the Face the Music program, Patterson & David Hood perform a Muscle Shoals tribute. Also, The Maldives are doing another live score, this time for The Wind. Basically, any time you have the opportunity to see a silent with a live score, you should take it.

* Shorts Fest is Memorial Day weekend. This year, in addition to Animated & Live Action, SIFF is a qualifying festival for Documentary Shorts, which is excellent! I usually utterly fail at shorts, and only see the Best of package the weekend following festival. I will try to be better at shorts this year.

* Titles that will be out in Seattle later, but I am dang excited to see regardless: Frances Ha (the new Noah Baumbach, starring Greta Gerwig), Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley’s new documentary), and The East (Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij of Another Earth and Sound of My Voice). The Seattle Times usually puts together a nice listing of SIFF films with upcoming Seattle release dates, which I’ll definitely share as soon as it’s up.

* Other titles I’m intrigued by: Her Aim Is True (about rock photographer Jini Dellaccio), Coming Forth By Day (debut from an Egyptian lady filmmaker), literally everything from South Korea & Taiwan, the six films in the Catalyst program, The Otherside (a doc on Seattle’s hip-hop scene), and finally Fateful Findings (which will probably be the next The Room).

…and that’s just a taste! Full schedule available in the free guides at the member preview on May 1st, and at Starbucks plus the box offices at the Uptown & Pacific Place starting on May 2nd. Tickets go on sale May 2nd.

If you’re on Twitter, follow me (letterboxed) and the official SIFF hashtag (#SIFF2013) for on-the-fly updates, recommendations, and more.

See you at the movies!

It turns out that I don’t have a lot of zombie experience. I’ve seen Shaun of the Dead lots, obviously, & the remake of Dawn of the Dead because it was sold in a 2-pack with Shaun and I love Sarah Polley and also deals.

But aside from those, my main zombie points of reference are 28 Days Later (clearly, as I am a Danny Boyle fan), Black Sheep, Dead and Deader (where Dean Cain is So Manly that he manages to halt the transformation at half-human/half-zombie after being bitten by a zombie scorpion), Remington and the Curse of the Zombadings (about which the less said the better), and, of course, Zombieland.

So, having not seen any of the true zombie classics, I don’t feel terribly qualified to speak to Warm Bodies as it relates to Zombies In Our Culture. However, it does seem to me to be an unusual entry, in that it is an optimistic zombie romance. Even Shaun of the Dead, the original romzomcom, can’t truly be called optimistic, or even a romance, the core bromance of all Pegg/Frost productions notwithstanding.

In most other zombie movies, once you’re a zombie, that’s it. You’re a drunk who’s lost a bet, lurching about, hunting for brains. If you’re a zombie in Warm Bodies you are definitely still lurching, still hunting for brains, but unless you’ve gone full-skeletor you have within you the possibility of change. You have the potential for friendship, and maybe even for love. You have an identity. You just don’t quite remember what it is.

Nicholas Hoult plays R, a zombie who lives at an airport. He’s your classic symbol-of-consumerism zombie, hoarding treasures of an abandoned world in a grounded plane. R’s working vocabulary is limited, but he gives good voiceover. Out on a hunt he encounters Julie (Teresa Palmer), and makes the choice to save her rather than eating her undoubtedly tasty brains. And yes, it took me another half hour to notice that their names are R & Julie & thus in addition to being an optimistic zombie movie it’s *also* an optimistic twist on Romeo & Juliet. I’m slow on the uptake, but at least I’m honest about it.

Objectively, it’s not a great movie. It’s awkwardly paced, especially until Julie is saved. But I have to give it a lot of points for going all-in on a new (at least to me) zombie mythology, and for the incredibly likable work of the core cast. I want to believe that Nicholas Hoult always runs like a zombie (especially down escalators), Teresa Palmer & Analeigh Tipton are great fun as zombie hunters coming to terms with this changing world, and Rob Corddry as R’s friend M is surprisingly charming. Charming zombies! Who knew?

It’s ridiculous, but it made me happy, which is sometimes all you want from a movie. It’s fun, it’s different, & Hoult is adorable. As a zombie. Sounds like a great Valentine’s Day option to me.

(Someone who knows more about vampire & zombie mythology than I do could write a piece on Warm Bodies as the anti-Twilight. His love for Julie inspires R to reclaim his humanity, whereas Bella’s love for Edward causes her to give hers up. Free idea!)

((There’s also actually room for comparison to Wristcutters: A Love Story, particularly in small worldbuilding details, like how Hoult never blinks as a zombie & no one ever smiled in the afterlife. Also the dark but still sweet tone & the post-apocalyptic cinematography is very similar.))

Basically, you’re better off watching LA Confidential. I spent a lot of Gangster Squad wishing that’s what I was doing. Gangster Squad also spends a lot of time *thinking* it’s LA Confidential, especially at the bright, sunshiny end. It isn’t.

I also spent a lot of time trying to figure out where I knew Josh Brolin’s wife from. Answer: she was played by Mireille Enos of “The Killing”, who apparently is nearly unrecognizable when she’s allowed to occasionally smile and to wear something other than over-sized woolly sweaters.

So, whatever. The setup is that Josh Brolin is tasked with setting up a secret policeman club to take out Sean Penn. He sets it up (or really, his wife does, as she’s definitely the best character in the movie). They take him out. Woo.

That they are successful is amazing considering that no one involved (except, occasionally, Giovanni Ribisi) ever has a complex thought about anything. They don’t have any ethical qualms about operating wholly outside the law. They don’t have a plan beyond “show up with guns”. They stride confidently into a set-up so obvious it might as well have flashing neon signs. And then, after many, many bullets are shot quickly and in slow motion and through people as well as Christmas decorations, they find someone to, you know, testify against Our Head Gangster.

Hooray.

There’s also a chemistry-free romance between Emma Stone & Ryan Gosling, which is kind of amazing because who knew such a thing was even possible?

Finally, my biggest question coming out of the film was anatomical: Is that *really* what happens when you chain someone’s arms & legs to two cars & drive them in opposite directions? They are bisected? That is not what I expected, but I haven’t been in a science class for more years than I’d care to admit. So if anyone would like to explain that to me, that’d be great.

Now, the good stuff this year in film, by my totally arbitrary & inconsistent categories:

Favorite films: HOLY MOTORS (ask anyone; I cannot stop talking about this movie), ANNA KARENINA, THE MASTER.

Favorite films you’ve possibly never heard of: Girl Walk // All Day, The Imposter, Yossi, Sound of My Voice.

Worthy of their buzz: Any Day Now, Silver Linings Playbook, Skyfall, Margaret, Moonrise Kingdom, Robot & Frank, The Sessions, Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Safety Not Guaranteed.

Under the radar: Natural Selection, Sister, The Hunter, Burning Man.

Optimistic movies that made me happy: Liberal Arts, Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best, Rent-a-Cat, Goon.

Best queer movies: Any Day Now, Cloudburst, Yossi, Keep the Lights On.

Best local films: Your Sister’s Sister, Eden, Fat Kid Rules the World.

Best teen films: Fat Kid Rules the World, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Best popcorn movies: Cabin in the Woods, John Carter, The Bourne Legacy.

SIFF Favorites: Future Weather, Dragon, King Curling, Starbuck, Rent-a-Cat, Nosilatiaj.Beauty, Chapiteau-show, Rebellion, Easton’s Article, Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood, Teddy Bear.

Best animated movie: Life of Pi 3D, The Avengers.

Best animated movie (for real): Tatsumi, Wrinkles.

Best horror movie: Ruby Sparks, The Innkeepers.

Best (depressing) romance: Take this Waltz, Friends with Kids.

Best documentaries: Pina, Samsara, Side by Side, Caesar Must Die, Dreams of a Life, Indie Game: the Movie, The Other Dream Team.

Best documentaries about famous & infamous people: Bill Cunningham: New York, Harry Belafonte: Sing Your Song, Under African Skies, The Queen of Versailles, The Source.

Ten favorite revival experiences: The Great Gatsby & Three Strangers at Noir City, Mean Girls vs Fight Club, Scarface shootalong, Children of Paradise 4K restoration, Badlands on 35mm, Castles in the Sky: Studio Ghibli series on 35mm, Grand Illusion on 35mm, Bonjour Tristesse 4K restoration, “Trapped in the Closet” singalong, Auntie Mame (AS ALWAYS).

Hey-it’s-that-guy of the year: Matt O’Leary (Natural Selection, Eden, & Fat Kid Rules the World).

Things I missed because there’s only so much time: Five Broken Cameras, Compliance, Brooklyn Castle, Chicken with Plums, and many many more.

Things I have yet to see on account of not living in NY or LA: Amour, Rust & Bone, Zero Dark Thirty.

Thing I have yet to see because it feels like homework: Lincoln.

Thing I have yet to see because it just came out last week: Django Unchained.

::

So, that’s that! A pretty full year of film, and yet, I know I missed a bunch. What did you love? What did you hate? Do you want me to talk more about anything? Are you shocked at anything I haven’t seen? Because personally I’m still pretty shocked I haven’t seen Pitch Perfect yet.

::

* The SIFF Cinema pass is such a fantastic deal. It worked out to about a buck fifty a film, & I definitely took more risks & expanded my viewing by having it.

It was argued to me that the yellowface wasn’t that big of a deal, because actors of color also appeared in the film as white characters. Here’s the thing about that argument: it’s bullshit. It’s pretty basic: actresses of color wearing makeup to appear as though they were white is not the same thing as white men wearing makeup to appear as if they were Korean. You know why? Because of history and power.

There is not a tradition of white actors being denied access to roles because actors of color put on some powder & stole all the plum jobs. There is, however, an ongoing problem of white actors being cast as characters of color. This is still happening today. It’s happened in every single Twilight movie. Prince of Persia. A Mighty Heart. Avatar: The Last Airbender. The upcoming Lone Ranger . That’s just off the top of my head.

Plus, there’s the question of billing. It would be troubling, but maybe less so, if the film featured a broad array of ethnicities. It didn’t. Of the six cast members who received top billing & appeared in the promotional materials, five were white men. The sixth was Halle Berry. This is not a wide range, I hope you’ll notice. This is white-man-as-default.

So. It’s a problem, and I didn’t want to support it financially. But SIFF picked it up for a week, which meant I could see it essentially for free. And I do actually like to see things and then form opinions on them, rather than just plucking opinions out of the air. So I went. And was appalled.

The thing is, the racial problems weren’t limited to the casting & the rep company structure of the film. There are a others that appear to be inherent in the source text. There’s the fact that all of the stories were Western except the dystopian future of fabricants & cannibalism. That, of course, is set in Korea. There’s also a colonialism arc, where a young lawyer has to have his life saved by an escaped slave before he realizes that slavery is bad, m’kay, complete with an eye-rollingly awful confrontation with his father-in-law.

Racial issues aside (which is, I grant you, a huge caveat), the film is enamored of its own cleverness. It always wants you to know just how neat it is that they’re making it happen with all the same actors. It takes a far more focused person than I am to watch it and not spent half the time trying to work out who is buried under makeup & prosthetics in this or that scene.

Furthermore, it was distracting trying to work out if casting actually meant anything in a given arc. For example, during the story where Doona Bae is the daughter of Hugo Weaving’s plantation owner character, I spent a significant portion of the scene wondering if her character then was meant to be white or biracial. Maybe someone who has read the book can tell me.

Plus, there are anvil-like connections between storylines. In 2012 Jim Broadbent yells that Soylent Green is people, and of course by 2144 fabricants are killed & turned into food for other fabricants. The problem with a lot of these is that they pop you out of the story with a visual or an audio joke.

The most egregious one reminded me of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. In that film, Luhrmann yanks the audience out of scenes with visual jokes, such as focusing on “longsword”, “dagger”, etc engraved on the side of firearms. As soon as that happens you’re not thinking about the story. You’re thinking about how clever it was to work in Shakespeare’s weapon choice.

In Cloud Atlas, this occurs during a passionate confrontation between a blackmailer & his victim. They’re at the height of the conflict, the victim is brandishing a gun, tension is running high… and right in the middle of everything we’re shown a lost item under the bed. Why on earth would you choose to do that? The audience is caught up and then you basically hit pause, point out the lost item (which, of course, is also a connection with another storyline LOOK AT HOW CLEVER). So irritating.

It’s also frustrating because aside from moments like that, the best part of the film is definitely the editing. Which sounds like damning with faint praise, but I don’t mean it that way. The book takes us through the six stories chronologically, I believe, forward through time and then back, but the film mixes and matches elements, weaving times together in a beautiful & effective way. The flow and pacing is definitely impressive, but in service of what? Evolution of the soul is hell. We’re all connected, from womb to tomb, apparently. And if at the repeated invocation of that phrase you can manage to not start humming “Jet Song” from West Side Story, you’re a better person than I am.

The second best part is a movie that existed only in my head. There’s a gorgeous still from the 1930s Cambridge section, which features James D’Arcy & Ben Whishaw in a room, arms raised, plates & pottery flying through the air. It looks like a still from a film about two magicians in love. I desperately want to see that movie. If someone could make that happen, I would appreciate it.

(Guys, I promise I’ve seen stuff this fall I really loved. Some of it was even new film. Some of it dealt with the evolution of the soul, and yet did not infuriate me! I’ll share it with you soon.)

I had been, like every other fankid, super excited about this movie. More Middle Earth! Hooray! I was even down with two movies. Why not. Everything these days has been broken into two movies whether it needs it or not. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows started it, and in some ways was very Tolkien-esque in that half of that book was just people walking around & camping. So, fine. I can dig it.

But then, after principal filming had long ended, came the announcement — just kidding! It’ll be three movies! Which, I’m sorry, but no. You’ve written an adaptation of a single children’s story. You split it into two films, theoretically with appropriate emotional arcs & character development & plot. And then, in the editing room, instead of taking out things that don’t serve those arcs & that story, you throw in everything and the kitchen sink & bam! Three movies.

At which point I started to worry. But the trailer was beautiful, and, like I said, I’m a fankid, so I was trying to withhold judgment. I was even letting the whole 48fps thing slide, even though that much conversation about the format rather than the story made me nervous.

There’s a lot of exciting film out right now, and to be honest, in the last few weeks, seeing The Hobbit started to feel like an obligation. But we got a group together, we laid in provisions, and we went. And then there was Sebastian the hedgehog. And then I gave up. It’s telling that when the movie ended, my viewing party immediately started listing complaints.

But first, in the interest of being positive, here’s what I liked:

* Martin Freeman is perfection as Bilbo. He’s fantastically Tookish, and brings much more to the character than he was given in the script. Also, I really want his patchwork robe. Make it so.

* It’s beautiful. I saw it in 2D digital. I’m not particularly interested in the 48fps. As it is, a lot of digital is too sharp for me, and that’s still in 24fps.

* The second song the dwarves sing is killer. It gave me false hope.

…that’s about it. On the other hand, there are all of these issues:

* Did we really need a twenty minute framing device? Is Elijah Wood that hard up for work? (It might not have been that long. But it felt like it had been a shockingly long time before the “Unexpected Journey” title card appeared.)

* I can’t tell the dwarves apart. I mean, they all look different, & obviously Thorin delivers (except when he’s talking about how much he hates Bilbo, wtf man). Also, there’s the one who was a vampire in Being Human, so I can pick him out, as well as the ginger one who I think was his boyfriend.

But still, of thirteen central characters I can confidently name only one. Most of them, I would not notice if they died. Maybe the round dwarf, because then they would stop making fat jokes, but that’s about it. And it’s not like there wasn’t time. The movie is practically three hours long. There are flashbacks & inclusions of extra characters & tales that don’t drive this arc. This is a story about people trying to get their home back! That is compelling, emotional business! Too bad none of that made it into the movie.

* There’s no banter, there’s no memorable dialogue, there’s no real tension because we know there are another six hours or so worth of movie coming, so no one will die yet, & it’s not like we know anything about them as individuals anyway.

* There are whole scenes that could have been removed without having any effect on the story.

* What is up with putting Galadriel on a lazy susan? Does she slowly rotate all the time, or is it just when she visits Rivendell?

* Not enough Lee Pace.

* This is a Tolkien thing but seriously. The fuckin’ eagles. Every time they show up you think: this thing could have been over hours ago, if they’d just give everyone a lift.

* And finally, IT’S SO DAMN LONG. I thought we were at the final battle scene, and there were at least two more after that. And it’s impossible to sit there and not think about the fact that there are two more movies. Ugh.

It’s been probably ten years since I read the book, and since I have a terrible memory I only remember four things that happen:

1) The beginning, when the dwarves invade Bilbo’s house.
2) The bit with the trolls.
3) Bilbo & Gollum’s game of riddles.
4) Getting to the Lonely Mountain & Dealing With Smaug.

This movie includes the first three, so I guess I’m going to have to go back & reread the book so I can figure out what the next six hours will contain. And at this juncture, I’m not sure that I really care to sit through it.

I’d really like to see Peter Jackson have to go back & work with no budget again. This is a movie by a guy who has too many damn toys. This movie is not about the story. It’s all about racking up jobs for Weta, and while their work is gorgeous, this is a film where the story is in service to the technology. It should be the other way round. Obviously.

I look forward to the day when the whole three or four or seventeen parts have been released, & someone cuts it down to maybe two or two and a half hours. I expect it will be mostly Martin being fantastic, and Gandalf counting everybody like a schoolteacher on a field trip.

And it’ll be beautiful.

1) It’s not like Primer. I had heard that Primer‘s writer/director/star Shane Carruth worked on Looper, which artificially inflated my expectations in regards to Primer-like loopiness.

2) That said, I never knew what was going to happen. I spent the entire movie double- and triple-guessing myself.

3) Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Young Bruce Willis makeup is distracting. Also, Bruce Willis should never have hair. And apparently this doesn’t bother anyone else, but their ears are different. This would not have bothered me if they hadn’t tried so hard with the other makeup.

4) I loved the Blade Runner-esque world-building to tiny bits, from the TK stuff to the casual absorption of tech into the established world (especially things like the security screen on the loft door) to the DIY retrofitting of the cars (about which nothing was said at all, which is perfect). I’m still not excited about the see-through phones we’re going to have in the future, but I guess I am going to have to get used to it.

5) However, this is not a future which is awesome for ladies. I am going to chalk that up to its inevitable elements of noir, but I am giving Rian Johnson a bit of a side-eye: noir or not, ladies can be other things than moms, waitresses, or prostitutes. I promise.

In the end, it’s worth seeing, absolutely, but it wasn’t what I had expected it to be, so I had to do some adjusting. In the end, I think my favorite Rian Johnson film so far is actually The Brothers Bloom, because in spite of all of the cons & in spite of my deep love for the perfect style of Brick, Bloom is the movie with a heart. But Looper is still worth your time.

I finally read it in 2004. I was finishing grad school and working a summer temp job. I remember reading Perks on my lunch break, sitting in the plaza above International District station, and then returning to the reception desk of a incredibly quiet office, where I would write ridiculous stories on the internet & watch increasingly depressing coverage of the presidential election. It’s just that kind of book. You remember where you were.

The thing about the book is that you read it, and you think that no high school kid would ever react to events like Charlie does. No high school kid is that sensitive. The thing we realized when we saw the movie is that Stephen Chbosky — author, screenwriter, director — *is* Charlie. Charlie exists.

But let’s back up for a moment.

What you want to know is that the film is lovely. All of the key moments you remember from the book are there, and they are true, and they are magical. The biggest criticism I can offer is that the cast is a little too beautiful, by which I mean not just that the leads are, but even the parents — Dylan McDermott & Kate Walsh as Father & Mother. Nina Dobrev as Charlie’s sister. Melanie Lynskey as his adored, troubled aunt. And so on.

The structure is a little different, because it is a movie, duh, and so there are things that are revealed later in the book but earlier in the movie, and vice versa. So if you are an OMG NO CHANGES EVER person, too bad for you. You’re missing out, is what I am saying.

If you’re older than me, the main thing you should know about the novel is that it’s epistolary. Thus, it is inevitably very internal, characters aren’t fleshed out beyond what they are to Charlie, and he of course is an unreliable narrator. He’s writing the letters to an unknown recipient, and this carries over (lightly) into the film. That’s an easy thing to overdo with loads of voiceover, and Chbosky avoids that trap, which is commendable.

The story follows Charlie through his freshman year of high school. He’s had shit happen to him in the past, heavier shit than happens to most teens, but not heavier than all. Because the thing about teenagers is that they’re people, and terrible things happen to them, and even if you ban the books that talk about those things, this will not have the magical effect of making bad shit go away. It has the magical effect of preventing teens from having a language to talk about their own lives.

Um. Got on a little YA librarian kick there. Sorry. Back now.

So he’s trying, as he says in the book, to ‘participate’ despite all this shit. And the beautiful thing about Logan Lerman as Charlie is that you can see this whole thing, the effort of participation (and it *is* an effort, to be a part of this world) written across his face. You can see it when he considers where to sit in the lunchroom, strategizes in the stands at the football game, and silently talks himself into joining in at the dance.

He still has darkness in him, and sometimes you can see something about him or hear something in his voice that makes you wonder if JD would have turned out okay in the end if he had an English teacher who really challenged him & if he had met the right friends in the early days of his freshman year.

Because Charlie does have the right teacher and he does meet the right friends. He meets two seniors, Sam (Emma Watson, with a serviceable American accent) & Patrick (Miller, who steals every damn scene he’s in), who make the effort to welcome him into their circle because they see both his potential and his need. And, of course, more than a little bit of themselves.

It made me feel All of the Feelings, it made me miss going to RHPS, and it made me so damn glad I’m not in high school anymore.

So now back to Charlie and Stephen. So our screening, to our great surprise, was followed by a Q&A. I am not going to be able to do justice to this experience, but there was a story shared that I think you should know, so we’re just going to power through.

The Q&A started out a bit awkward. Chbosky said that he wasn’t usually like this, that Seattle was a special place for him, but you never know. I’ve attended the film festival for 16 years, and some directors just give bad Q&A, you know? But finally he started talking about Stewart Stern (which I found super exciting, because I am a total Stewart Stern fangirl: you can buy me a drink sometime & I will tell you all about it), and THEN. He told us Stern was in the house that night and asked him to come down & join him.

And I exploded a little inside.

They talked about a number of things, and I believe it was edited into a podcast, but here’s the important story: when Chbosky was 17, he chose the USC film program because Stern taught in it, but right at the start of the school year, Stern suffered a heart attack. While he was recovering, Chbosky sent him anonymous packages, full of things to charm & cheer (like, seriously, Winnie-the-Pooh books) & with (as Stern tells it) beautiful, inspiring letters.

Not wanting it to seem as if he was doing it to get ahead in the business, Chbosky sent it all under a pseudonym, and Stern was unable to find out who the packages were from. Stern had an open letter posted in response, and in this way they carried on a correspondence, anonymous on one side, for TWO YEARS. Incredibly mature, sensitive correspondence from a teenager. Sound familiar?

Then, well. You’ll have to hear Stern tell it some time, how he just knew when he saw him that the letters were from Chbosky, and how that was the start of a mentorship & friendship that lasts til this day. And if you don’t tear up even a little, you are made of tougher stuff than I am.

At the screening someone asked if when there would be the film or book of their relationship, and Chbosky said that for his side, this was it. Obviously. Charlie’s letters to someone who doesn’t know him (and who he doesn’t really know) plus the mentorship by his English teacher (Paul Rudd, by the way, which is great).

It’s an amazing tribute. And it’s out now. You should see it.

I wish I could go back to college.
In college you know who you are.
You sit in the quad, and think, “Oh my God!
I am totally gonna go far!”

Josh Radnor is a few years older than me, but in Liberal Arts, his Jesse Fisher is also looking for “an academic advisor to point the way”. He works in college admissions in New York, and he gets a call from an old professor (Richard Jenkins, perfection as usual), inviting him back for his retirement celebration.

Back at his alma mater he meets 19 year old Zibby (yes, it is a ridiculous name, but you don’t care very much because she’s played by Elizabeth Olsen) & they strike up a friendship. It’s about wishing you could go back to college, and working out why that is not an awesome idea.

Liberal Arts is not breaking any new ground, but it’s a pleasant film, elevated by its cast, which in addition to the aforementioned includes Allison Janney, Elizabeth Reaser, and a scene-stealing turn by Zac Efron (no, really). There’s dialogue about how no one is really grown-up, but you have people like Richard Jenkins saying it, which makes it okay. It’s a dose of nostalgia and a cure for it all at once.

(I should mention that I do not watch “How I Met Your Mother”, and so I do not know what effect that might have on your experience watching a Josh Radnor film. So there you go. Also, I would like copies of the CDs Zibby sends Jesse, so if someone could get on that, that would be awesome.)

I saw Liberal Arts on a Monday evening at SIFF, and the next day I saw Todd Luiso’s film Hello I Must Be Going.

On the surface, Hello I Must Be Going is the same story, but with the gender roles reversed. Instead of going back to college after a breakup, Amy (Melanie Lynskey in a fantastic performance) goes back home after her divorce, which is as helpful for her mental health as you might imagine.

At an insufferable dinner party she meets 19 year old Jeremy (Christopher Abbott), a young presumed-gay actor who is the only other person at the party interested in being an actual human being. They connect, and then struggle to hide this bizarre relationship from both sets of parents.

Of the two, Liberal Arts is the most straight-forward accessible picture, but Hello I Must Be Going is the better film. I’m disappointed by its terrible IMDb score. The film is hard on Amy — she’s at a much lower point in her life when Hello begins than Jesse is in Arts, and she still has farther to fall, but it’s a much more interesting journey and a braver performance.

Liberal Arts continues at SIFF at the Uptown.
Hello I Must Be Going continues at Regal Meridian.

1) The baseball team in question is the Braves. I have been informed that this is an important piece of information, but you should know that the person who told me this is a Phillies fan. None of this actually means anything to me.

2) The story is…whatever. Clint Eastwood is his grunting & muttering old goat from Gran Turino, but now as a baseball scout. He’s about to be pushed out of the organization by Young Guys Who Use Computers Rather Than Instinct, but he has One Last Chance To Prove Himself. It’s basically the anti-Moneyball.

3) He also has a Complicated Relationship with his daughter (Amy Adams as a lawyer with fantastic hair, not a Bubbly Princess or MPDG, which is nice). She develops a Complicated Relationship with Justin Timberlake, who is willing to wait As Long As It Takes for her to be ready, which is [SPOILER] about a minute and a half.

4) All of this plays out against a backdrop of high school baseball games, with a mediocre script & worse camerawork. I am not a filmmaker or anything, but it really cannot be that difficult to have both Adams *and* Timberlake in focus at the same time. It’s directed by long-time Eastwood AD Robert Lorenz, which I suppose explains how he got Eastwood to sign on.

5) Four versions of “You Are My Sunshine” are used in the film. None of them are performed by Justin Timberlake. One of them is performed by Clint Eastwood, and it feels like the toast scene in Bridesmaids: endless.

Bonus: The best part of the movie was definitely the trailer for Argo. Basically, if you want to watch a baseball movie, there are plenty of good ones. If you want to watch Eastwood being cranky, there’s YouTube of his RNC appearance, but also Gran Turino, which is problematic but interesting. And even though I haven’t seen it yet, I’m pretty sure that The Master is the best Amy Adams film in theaters Friday.