SIFF 2016: The Good, The Bad, and The Golden SunBreak Awards!

SIFF 2016Initially, Ye Olde SunBreak SIFF Hivemind had misgivings about posting our final evaluations of SIFF 2016 relatively late. But one thing we’ve learned as battle-hardened film festival veterans is that SIFF is a gift that keeps on giving.

Josh: Yes, it’s nice that SIFF gives everyone a few days of breathing room before diving back in. But before we get started with our own thoughts on the festival, in case readers missed them, here’s a rundown of SIFF’s major awards. First, SIFF-goers at large choose the Golden Space Needle through all of those torn ballots and write-in votes. In their collective wisdom, they lauded the following with statues: Captain Fantastic (Best Film), Gleason (Best Documentary), Javier Ruiz Caldera of Spy Time (Best Director), Vicky Hernandez of Between Sea and Land (Best Actress), Rolf Lassgård of A Man Called Ove (Best Actor).

In parallel, a series of professional SIFF juries selected winners from the various competitions: Girl Asleep (Official Competition), You’ll Never Be Alone (Ibero-American), Sand Storm (New Directors), Death By a Thousand Cuts (Documentary), and Middle Man (New American Cinema).

Tony: SIFF’s so huge in scope, you can have a hearty dose of truly amazing cinephilia without catching any of the final award winners. That was the case for me this year, for sure. I can only speak for Gleason and The IF Project (Lena Sharpe Award for Persistence of Vision),  both really strong docs. Did either of you catch any of the award winners?

Chris:  When SIFF wrapped up on Sunday night, I had seen 62 total films (including top prize winner Captain Fantastic), probably surpassing my previous three SIFFs combined. I don’t think I had went a day during the festival without watching a movie, and I had done thirteen interviews with guests (I’m eager to post all of them, but some will have to wait). I thought it was a good SIFF overall, as I seemed to enjoy a large percentage of the movies I caught and only one movie felt like a true waste of my time. I don’t want to say which one, but it rhymes with “Greasy Strangler.”

Josh: I didn’t see a single one! But I do think that it’s interesting that forty-two years into being a film festival, this was the first year SIFF held an overall “Official Competition“. The award was juried by a team of international industry members; SIFF programmers nominated films on the basis of their excellence, all of which had to be World, North American, or US premieres. It’s easy to get lost in all of the moods, pathways, and programs. Having an official competition with a dozen or so curated films feels like it gives the festival more of an artistic focus vs. a cinema buffet line. I hope they continue in this direction and that the award grows in prestige over time, with filmmakers seeing a benefit to premiering at SIFF.

Tony: For those of us who missed some of these winners, SIFF screens several of the fest’s audience faves and award winners during its Best of SIFF 2016 mini-festival Friday June 17 through Wednesday June 23. You can catch Spy Time (Golden Space Needle recipient for Best Director) and Middle Man (SIFF Grand Jury Prize, New American Cinema) June 17; Oddball (SIFF Youth Jury Award, Best Films4Families Feature), Naledi: A Baby Elephant’s Tale, and Burn Burn Burn June 18; Kedi, Truman, Sand Storm and The Best of SIFF Shorts 2016 June 19; Hunt for the Wilderpeople June 20; A Man Called Ove June 21; The Queen of Ireland June 22; and Girl Asleep June 23. More deets on the films and tickets reside here.

Tony: It seemed, from my relative outsider’s perspective, that this year was another one where SIFF audiences chose wisely. What say both of you?

Josh: Travel took me out of the game for a big chunk of this year’s festival; so I didn’t manage to see any of them in my relatively-abbreviated SIFFing this year. I will put on my tinfoil hat and whisper that even if Captain Fantastic lived up to its title, quality-wise, there’s something slightly suspicious about it taking top prize entirely on the basis of votes from people who were willing to pay a bunch of money to spend time in the company of Viggo Mortensen as he was being (rightfully) lauded for a lifetime’s worth of great acting. That it was filmed in Washington must’ve also helped its chances, too. Conspiracy theories aside, though, Matt Ross won a directing award for the film at Cannes and the film, Chris called it “mostly great“, and it was also near the top of the festival’s most fanatical filmgoing passholders poll; so I’ll take off the conspiracy goggles and deem its win mostly legit. It’s unfortunate that the audience’s favorite film didn’t make it into the Best of SIFF weekend, but I look forward to catching it in wide release next month.

Tony: SIFF Tribute subject Viggo Mortensen was on hand to introduce David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises. Unbelievably, I’d never seen it previously, and it represents one of the most satisfying ostensible mob movies I’ve ever seen. That Mortensen’s magnetic work as a tarnished but honorable mob driver received an Oscar nod but failed to take home the gold trophy stands as one of the great robberies of the 21st century.

Tony: Before diving into our Golden SunBreak Awards, maybe we should do a quick-and-dirty episode of What We Saw in our last week-plus of SIFF 42.

Josh: I had some fun with a couple of movies that squeeze under the thrilling capers in far off lands umbrella. The question at the heart of Disorder is whether the PTSD-afflicted veteran-turned-bodyguard is perceptive or just paranoid. Treading in much different waters than Oscar-nominated Mustang (which she wrote, but didn’t direct), Alice Winocour has a twitchy wounded Matthias Schoenaerts guarding Diane Kruger and son in a mostly empty luxurious estate while her husband’s away. As his paranoid suspicions mount, they become less paranoid, more real, and culminate in a very intense finale. Much glossier was Susanna White’s Our Kind of Traitor, which finds British civilians Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris stumbling into the heart of a well-appointed John Le Carré caper, that if nothing else, spices up their flagging marriage. If you’ve seen one Le Carré, you can probably guess the general shape and structure of the story — corruption, government and otherwise, good people acting badly, etc. — but it’s told here sumptuously, in beautifully photographed locales, and with strong performances up and down the bill, making for a more than pleasant ride.

Tony:  There’s really not much to fault about Under the Shadow, a period horror film set in late 1980s Iran in which a mother deals with a whirling-dervish demon that’s trying to possess her young daughter. It’s solid on all counts–well acted, thoughtfully crafted, and possessing a few genuinely thrilling moments. But like Awaiting, Under the Shadow didn’t quite take off for me. The fact that it plays like an earnest but not as powerful variation on The Babadook could be a factor.

Kyoshi Kurosawa’s latest thriller Creepy is two-thirds subtle and perfectly-modulated gradual unease, one-third over-the-top serial killer shocker. In it, a retired homicide detective-turned-college-professor investigates some disappearances that could well put him in the path of a shadowy serial killer. The jarring shift in mood renders it uneven as hell, but there’s no denying there are pieces of two great movies in here: They just never feel like they belong together.

Tony: I’ve prattled elsewhere about the locally-set doc A New High, so I’ll just add to it by saying it’s another customarily strong SIFF doc that’s as exhilarating as it is emotionally impactful. The last doc I caught during SIFF 2016 was Red Gringo, the account of US-born pop singer turned Chilean superstar turned fiery protester Dean Reed’s ascent and mysterious death. It’s a little dry in places, skewing towards traditional, staid doc structure (talking heads, blurry photographs, expert testimony, etc.), but the true-life story it chronicles couldn’t be a more compelling premise. It also effectively serves up a riveting view of the sea change between the 1950s and ’60s, made manifest in one human being who lived through both decades.

Josh: On the documentary side, I caught a couple since my last visit to the SunBreak roundtable. In Uncle Howard, director Howard Brookner’s filmmaker nephew tries to make something out of his late-uncle’s archival material, largely from his acclaimed documentary about William S. Burroughs. The movie takes the form of a meditative tribute collage and never really settles on a strong point of view. I’m not sure that the documentary actually “worked”, but I will say that watching the intermingling of scenes from the present with those of the 1980s, in which gay social lives and the beginning of the AIDS epidemic collided among the Manhattan arts scene, evoked a feeling of falling out of time and understanding the constant and fleeting persistence of youth. On a much lighter front Chicken People was and entirely charming documentary about some weird birds and the ornate chickens they raise for competitions. The chickens are photographed beautifully and the human characters are presented with real humanity: I agree with Chris’s assessment that it was brilliant and offbeat.

Chris: I barely made it into a Wednesday night screening of The Fits in Columbia City because the 7 bus I took made literally every stop between the stop I got on and the stop I got off. But for all the trouble and anxiety of worrying about whether I’d make it or not, it was worth it as this was one of my favorite movies of the festival. It centers around a young, African American tomboy in Cincinnati (she’s played by Royalty Hightower in a [child]star-making role) and she wants to fit in with an after-school dance troupe. A bunch of the girls on the squad start getting afflicted with fainting spells and seizures. I don’t think enough superlatives can be said about the young Ms. Hightower’s performance, which was so compelling, even (or especially) when she wasn’t speaking.

Tony: Two of the films in SIFF’s Catalyst program for first-time filmmakers, Claire in Motion and Americana, felt like very kindred spirits. The former follows the title character as she desperately searches for her missing husband, while the latter details the efforts of a film editor who discovers what may be a conspiracy that ties directly into the seemingly random murder of his actress sister. Both centered around great central performances: Breaking Bad‘s Betsy Brandt navigates the emotional currents of Claire in Motion  with candor and nuance, while David Call’s great turn as an alcoholic thrust into a potential labyrinth of deceit and murder carries Americana thoroughly. Moreover, both movies share endings that take ambiguity to another level entirely. I think Americana‘s through-lines to Blow-Up and The Conversation captivated me more, but these are both really good suspense films that work more as examinations of mounting dread than visceral gut-punches.

Josh: Of those, I caught only Americana. I agree that its loose mystery was well served by being presented in a gauzy non-chronological haze. If nothing else, the ambiguity and fragmented storytelling induced a sense of empathy with the grieving alcoholic film editor at the center of the story.

A couple other movies on the “dark and challenging” side were also highly rewarding. Consistently squirmy, From Afar starts with middle-aged guy cruising the streets of Caracas to find young guys willing to be paid to serve as his in-home shame/masturbation fodder. For a time, it seems that he’s met his match when one of his conquests robs him but returns for companionship. Over time, an unsettling relationship develops between the reticent controlled older man (Alfredo Castro) and his young, charismatic, and volatile youth (Luis Silva). Although the balance of power isn’t immediately clear, the way that director Lorenzo Vigas frames Castro in the shots gives some clues as the film makes its way to a breathtaking conclusion. More homoeroticism, of the distinctly unintentional white male variety, figure heavily in Goat, about the rituals of toxic masculinity, particularly as they involve the American Greek system on small town campuses. Although Joe Jonas is the most recognizable face in the film, his entirely competent performance is easily overshadowed by the raw emotional availability of Ben Schnetzer’s portrayal of Brad Land (upon whose 2004 memoir the film is based). The film follows Brad’s attempt — in the wake of his recovery from a random violent assault — to doggedly follow his older brother (Jonas) to college and, more socially importantly, through obscene hazing rituals of his fraternity. The film is visceral and difficult to watch, but ultimately rewarding, if only for reminding me that my decision to steer clear of greek life as an undergraduate was an incredibly good decision.

Tony: One of my most conflicted reactions to a movie all SIFF long occurred during All the Birds Have Flown South, another SIFF Catalyst entry. My Golden SunBreak Award for Best Actress would probably have to go to Joey Lauren Adams’ work as a perpetually addicted waitress at a Nowheresville diner in a seamy corner of Arkansas. It’s the textbook definition of fearless, and she disappears into the part completely.  Directors Josh and Miles Miller also exhibit some crazy solid skills. But it’s all in the service of a story whose consistent tone of unpleasant, oft-pointless nihilism could turn anyone manic-depressive.

Chris: I agree with you on All The Birds Have Flown South, particularly Joey Lauren Adams’ performance as the down-and-out waitress in BFE, AR. The tone was unpleasant throughout and none of the three characters showed any real positive attributes, but the Brothers Miller wear their Southern gothic influences on their sleeve and I couldn’t help but feel like they read the same Flannery O’Connor short stories that I revere.

Josh: That was one of the late-additions that I had planned to try to catch, but after seeing the trailer before another screening I decided to steer clear. Sounds like my intuition was right, for once!

Chris: During my interview with the gentlemen from B-Movie Bingo (interview TK, I promise!), we used a room in the W Hotel shortly after Lou Diamond Phillips was giving press interviews for The Night Stalker. Mr. Phillips left his coffee cup behind, and while I was not one to drink from it (I can’t say the same for others), I did snap a picture of it. In honor of thi20160604_152623
s piece of movie ephemera, I am taking suggestions for what the Lou Diamond Philips Coffee Cup award should recognize next year.

Josh: Maybe it can honor the movie that felt more like a Lifetime commission than a Lifetime acquisition? Or for movies where Team SunBreak has split opinions? I know that both of you loved the Night Stalker; so I won’t pick on it too much here in our final roundtable. As much as I appreciated Lou Diamond Philips’s performance, the rest of the movie just did not work for me. Although I’m a big fan of Bellamy Young on Scandal and liked her work here, I really wish that Griffiths didn’t graft a fictional character into this story of a real serial killer.

Tony: I have mad respect for writer/director Joey Johnson’s ambition on his latest feature Paralytic, but I wasn’t quite as taken by it as you were, Chris. Johnson’s attempted to make a paranoid spy thriller here, complete with shootouts, a nihilistic back-and-forth chronology, and complex webs of characters and double-crosses on a budget that wouldn’t pay for one catered meal on a Brad Pitt movie set. He’s also peopled it with some great local actors. But the very low budget really shows its seams in places, and its darkly dramatic moments kind of bump uncomfortably against passages that don’t seem to recognize their own inherent absurdity.

Josh: I’m usually a sucker for quirky movies about sad teens, but I guess I’d file Coconut Hero under “mild disappointments”. In it, an oddly upbeat yet suicidal Canadian teenaged boy’s dream comes true: he gets a brain tumor, a reunion with his long-lost father, and a therapy dance instructor who might as well have been engineered using the computer in Weird Science.  Perhaps it helps to understand that it was a German script translated to Canadian sensibilities, but maybe by sad teen coming of age card had already been filled by the weirder, darker, more daring Closet Monster early in the festival.

Tony: My other relative disappointment came with Awaiting, a Spanish drama involving a married couple’s journey through adoption of a child in Lithuania. There’s nothing at all wrong with this well-acted and earnest drama, it just didn’t ignite my like I’d hoped. It amplified my grief at having passed up the last screening of the very acclaimed Middle Man to see it.

Josh: Closing on a more upbeat note, the characters played by Michael Shannon & Imogen Poots in Frank & Lola definitely weren’t great for each other, but the actors put on stellar performances playing them in this Vegas-set jealousy-fueled noir. While that movie was about a passionate but mismatched couple falling apart due to ambitions, paranoia, and a thirst for revenge, I also enjoyed a couple movie about young love on the run. In Andreas Öhman’s Eternal Summer, a pair of attractive, young, and aimless Swedes meet cute (on opposite sides of an extramarital affair), hit the road, and turn increasingly criminal, all shot in the permanent golden hour of Northern Sweden. Escaping a different kind of prison of social democracy, lo-fi sci-fi Equals envisions a future where the survivors of some unspecified global catastrophe live collectively in and immaculate, egalitarian, but soulless setting, having eradicated the pesky emotions that may have nearly wiped humanity off the map. When Kristin Stewart & Nicholas Hoult catch feelings, it’s serious business since coupling is forbidden and out of control emotions are a terminal disease resulting in permanent institutionalization. With a touch of Romeo and Juliet, some nice wide aperture filming, the cool repurposing of Japan and Singapore setting, and blockbuster talent swinging for the fences in this relatively smaller character piece, the whole thing comes across as less silly than it sounds.

Tony: Revival screenings last week provided some of my favorite SIFF 2016 moments. Along with previously-mentioned Eastern Promises, Buster Keaton’s 1927 classic The General, meantime, should be on everyone’s cinematic bucket list. Stratospherically ahead of its time, it stands as a technical achievement of stunning proportions, with stunts that will alternately elicit belly laughs and slack-jawed awe at equal turns.

Josh: … and that, I suppose brings us almost to the end. I was out of town, how was closing night?

Chris: SIFF’s closing night film came from Amazon Studios (like Café Society, the opening night film), and it was brilliant. The Dressmaker was director Jocelyn Moorhouse’s first movie in about eighteen years (she explained during the introduction of the screening I went to, and later in an interview with me) that she was away from filmmaking for so long to raise autistic children. In the movie, Kate Winslet stars as a woman who returns to the Australian village she was banished from as a ute, blamed for the death of a young boy. While away, she becomes a skilled seamstress with impeccable fashion sense. She tries to rise above the small town pettiness by being the best damn dressmaker that crappy little village town has ever seen. Kate Winslet is truly one of cinema’s reigning goddesses and this had one of the most satisfying and cathartic endings I’ve ever seen. I’m not saying I hadn’t seen a better movie at SIFF, but I don’t think I saw a more enjoyable one. What a great way to end the festival.

Tony: Before we get to our own awards, Josh, you’re usually our man in the field at the Golden Space Needle Awards ceremony. Were you on the award-ceremony frontlines this year, too?

Josh: I’m afraid not — no brunch for me this year! I think the invite list has gotten too exclusive in the festival’s old age. I wonder if Viggo stuck around to claim the sculpture for Captian Fantastic from the vantage point of the Space Needle’s mid-altitude observation deck?

Chris: Never fear, I’m sure they paled in comparison to this year’s entirely imaginary Tom Douglas-catered Golden SunBreak Awards brunch — a particularly memorable affair. There was not a dry eye in the place when Roger Corman accepted his Lifetime Achievement Award and dedicated the award to the creator of fake blood. Susan Sarandon showed up in person to collect her Best Actress Award. She didn’t actually appear in any SIFF movies this year, but she came all this way and we had to give her something for her troubles. And who could forget the rough draft we screened of Harmony Korine’s latest, Trash Humpers 2?

With that, the envelope please …

Josh: OK. I’ll go first, my top three are:

  • Little Men: The bonds for friendship, family, and finances collide as Ira Sachs puts the friendship of two boys in constantly-gentrifying Brooklyn at the conclusion of his loose men in New York trilogy.
  • Wiener-Dog: Highly divisive among SIFF audiences, I’m not saying that the latest from Todd Solondz is perfect, but I don’t know if any other filmmaker could photograph the excrement and effluvia of a stray dachshund more lovingly. This revolting juxtaposition of form and content carries through to each of the four vignettes and the hilarious intermission. Finding out that Dawn Weiner from Welcome to the Dollhouse grows up to be Greta Gerwig would’ve been prize enough; watching Julie Delpy apply the Bringing up Bebé lessons of French motherhood and spinning an incredibly racist yarn about the need to spay and neuter your pets closed the deal. Plus, it had a section skewering youth film culture with Danny Devito as a beleaguered professor and Ellen Burstyn dealing with impending death as the sweet relief from her wayward granddaughter’s pleas for cash. The whole thing felt simultaneously gentle and razor sharp.
  • Love & Friendship: Whit Stillman has long been an ace student of social climbing and comedies of manners. Of course, his take on minor Austen turned out to be a spectacular delight, complete with schemes, brains, and buffoons.

Chris: my top three (in alphabetical order):

  • THE DRESSMAKER: Jocelyn Moorhouse’s comeback film is filled with Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, rugby, a cross-dressing sheriff, and revenge. I don’t expect movies to include all this, but maybe I should?
  • THE FITS: Almost a documentary, this movie follows a young girl as she tries to fit in with her city’s best after-school dance troupe. It’s relevant to the moment and its style of filming makes it impossible to look away.
  • NUTS! Director Penny Lane’s newest easily the greatest documentary ever about a quack who believed in curing impotence with goat testicle transplants. ‘Nuff said. (Yes, Penny Lane is the name she was born with.)

Tony: And finally, my top three movies and recipients of my Golden SunBreak Awards are:

  • Dawn: Latvian director Laila Pakalnina’s period tragedy about a young boy’s betrayal of his father to Bolsheviks was the most visually luminous thing I saw all SIFF. Shot with incomparably fluid elegance (suck it, hand-held camerawork!) in clarion black and white, it unfolds a completely immersive world with staggering confidence. It’s one of those rare movies that finds transcendent beauty even in some of the most brutal and ugly places.
  • The Brand New Testament: Belgian director Jaco van Dormael’s rich satire is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Amelie, and Douglas Adams rolled up into one howlingly funny, dazzlingly creative, and unexpectedly romantic whole.
  • Rainbow Time: Linas Phillips writes, directs, and acts in this indie dramedy detailing the life of a developmentally disabled man and his dysfunctional family. Funny, fearless, and uncomfortably honest in places, it finds truth and many belly laughs amidst a potentially cliché setup.

Josh: I guess, until next year, that’s a wrap! As ever, it’s been a real delight SIFFing with you fine fellows.