Jimbo’s Wisconsin Film Festival Dispatch: Day Three

I decided to take it a bit easier after my five-film Day Two, and only watch only three films on Day Three. And as I write this on Day Four, various factors have led me to take an even easier day today; my new plan is to only catch 20,000 Days on Earth tonight.

The other big story, of course, was the Final Four match up between our Wisconsin Badgers and the Kentucky Wildcats. It really transformed the campus throughout the day, and made commuting between venues a bit challenging.

Ten films? How about a button for getting out of HAPPY CHRISTMAS, driving through the gauntlet, finding parking, and making it to TRICKED.

— Madison Film Forum (@MadFilmForum) April 6, 2014

In Brief:

Happy Christmas (Joe Swanberg, USA, 2014, 78min)»

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I don’t think the UW Cinematheque and the Festival has to program everything Swanberg makes or appears in (he is also in The Sacrament this year), but Happy Christmas is a charming, entertaining film. Swanberg has developed a confident, relaxed screen presence, but the film’s strongest moments feature conversations between the female characters played by Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, and Lena Dunham. A theme has emerged in the Festival films: allowing kids to behave like kids (Like Father, Like Son; Ilo Ilo; Domestic). In this case, the toddler in Happy Christmas (Swanberg’s son, Jude) steals many scenes by simply being a toddler.

The short that played before Happy Christmas, Dustin Guy Defa’s Person to Person, inspired New Yorker critic Richard Brody to write about the state of the short film in contemporary cinema. Brody describes the feel of the film very well when he says it has “the relaxed discursiveness of a major literary short story.”

Tricked (Paul Verhoven, Netherlands, 2012, 89 min.)»

Actually, Tricked itself is only around 50 minutes, but it is paired with a documentary about the production of the film. The documentary needed to be half as long and twice as informative. I was actually amazed at how much screen time could be devoted to talking about the process of writing the script, without really explaining how the script was written. In a nutshell, the script was crowdsourced after an initial four pages were written introducing the eight main characters. Despite the innovative process, the result was a relatively conventional script, with interesting twists to be sure, but I’m not sure if I would have watched the making-of documentary if I had seen the final film first.

Tricked is a lot of fun, however. And a climactic scene had one of the loudest crowd responses I have ever heard at a Wisconsin Film Festival screening.

Crimes Against Humanity (Jerzy Rose, USA, 2013, 77 min)»

I put this near the top of my list of discoveries at this year’s Festival. I’m going to collect my thoughts on it a bit longer and write about it at length soon.

Another very funny short, Verbatim (Dir: Brett Weiner) brings to life the transcript to a completely maddening deposition from someone who tries to avoid answering the question, “Does your office have a photocopier?” You can get a taste of Brett Weiner’s sense of humor at his YouTube page.