Reviews: One Night Only
WUD Film Mini-Indie Festival, November 20-23, Union South Marquee Theater
See Complete Schedule at wudfilm.com» (or click on poster)
In the coming days we hope to add more reviews in anticipation of the WUD Film Mini-Indie Festival, which starts next Thursday. We are very happy to see the Festival move from the Spring (the week after the Wisconsin Film Festival) to the Fall so that it can now develop its own distinct identity and avoid festival burnout.
A few months ago, I started a “Missed Madison” series of reviews (well, I say series but we’ve done only one) with which I hoped to highlight films that did not have a theatrical run or a campus screening in Madison. Interestingly, the first title I picked for the series now will have played in Madison twice; Only Lovers Left Alive played Spotlight Cinema at MMoCA, and now will return in its gorgeous 35mm print for the Mini-Indie Festival. I’ve never been happier to make a correction. Jake and I also now will scrap (or re-format) two other planned “Missed Madison” reviews thanks to the Mini-Indie Festival: Steven Knight’s Locke (with Tom Hardy) and Errol Morris’s The Unknown Known. It would be great if the entire Mini-Indie lineup were premieres (how many times did we see trailers for Asghar Farhadi’s The Past without it ever showing up?), but the selections do allow people to catch up with films that they might have missed during a brief run (Blue Ruin) or re-visit films again on the big screen (Jake is particularly pleased to have another opportunity to see A Most Wanted Man).
Until our new reviews are ready, check out our archives for reviews of three films playing at the Mini-Indie Festival: Dusty Stakes of Mom; Only Lovers Left Alive, and Wetlands. Click the links for the full review, or those with short attention spans can scan over the quotes.
Dusty Stacks of Mom (Jodie Mack, USA, 2013, 41 min)
Union South Marquee Theater, Thursday, November 20, 9:30pm
At the center of the program is Dusty Stacks of Mom, which is a hybrid of experimental and documentary cinema and tells the most overt story of the five films. It chronicles Mack’s mother’s poster shop, which is clearly on its last legs. Instead of a conventional documentary approach, Mack lets the “inventory tell the story” by animating innumerable rolls and stacks of posters and coupling those shots later in the film with alternately hilarious and poignant shots of her mom. As if the stop-motion weren’t enough, the filmmaker herself provides voiceover by singing reworked/reinterpreted lyrics to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, USA, 2013, 123 min)
Union South Marquee Theater, Friday, November 21, 9:00pm
In Only Lovers Left Alive, Jarmusch tips his hat to many vampire genre conventions while at the same time wandering through an idiosyncratic story structure that foregrounds many of his longtime preoccupations. That might not be enough for the zombies with short attention spans who cry out for brains, but the results are tasty for hipsters and aesthetes who don’t need to drink a movie dry, but can savor a fine glass of the good stuff.
Wetlands (David Wnendt, Germany, 2013, 109 min)
Union South Marquee Theater, Saturday, November 22, 11:30pm
Wetlands is not for the squeamish. A good test is the opening scene, where our 18-year old protagonist Helen (Carla Juri) walks barefoot in a flooded public restroom into a stall so that she can apply her hemorroid cream. After an amusing computer animated examination of just how disgusting the toilet is, Helen deliberately rubs herself all over the seat as an act of defiance against her uber-hygenic mother (Meret Becker). The film has been described as “gross-out” humor, but that is a little misleading for those expecting Judd Apatow. Gross-out, yes. Humor, definitely. But here Helen’s interest in pushing the boundaries of what society thinks about the body is rooted in a childhood of emotional abuse and psychological trauma. There’s a certain point watching Wetlands where you start to feel like you shouldn’t be laughing anymore, and that makes for a much more thought-provoking viewing experience (because you do keep laughing).