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If you're overwhelmed by the vastness of the 2011 Wisconsin Film Festival (March 30-April 3), we have some suggestions for you. Scripted and documentary, foreign and domestic, these are 12 films we guarantee to be worth your while. Some screenings are sold out, but rush tickets will be available.
Poetry
Wisconsin Union Theater, Wednesday, March 30, 8:15 pm
Bartell Theatre, Friday, April 1, 1:15 pm
The teenage grandson she's raising is a monster, the disabled man she looks after is making unwelcome advances, and she's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Mija (Jeong-hie Yun) has problems, and she seeks consolation in learning how to write poetry. The triumph of this quiet South Korean melodrama is Yun's brave performance, somehow lighthearted and fierce at the same time.
- Kenneth Burns
Carlos
Wisconsin Union Theater, Friday, April 1, 1 pm
Made as a television miniseries by Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep), this stunning film biography of the international terrorist Carlos the Jackal is a tour de force for the Venezuelan actor Édgar Ramírez. Carlos is a charismatic leader, a womanizer, a cold-blooded murderer, and the film traces his violent career over decades. It begins amid the political ferment of the early 1970s and concludes after the end of the Cold War renders his brand of revolution irrelevant. A 140-minute theatrical cut exists, but do yourself the favor of luxuriating in this sprawling 5-1/2-hour version.
- Kenneth Burns
Aurora
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Friday (8 pm) & Sunday (3:45 pm), April 1 & 3
A three-hour movie about a mass murderer in which nothing happens? You must be talking about the Romanian New Wave. I exaggerate. Stuff does happen in the fascinating Aurora, which was written and directed by Cristi Puiu, whose The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) is a defining work in Romanian cinema's remarkable flowering. It's just that American moviegoers aren't used to seeing violent sociopaths portrayed this way. Viorel (Puiu) calmly drives around. He goes shopping. He squabbles with his stepfather. He talks with the neighbors about his home-improvement projects. Here and there, he kills people. Puiu creates lengthy, aching silences in which viewers can ruminate on what all this means. I found myself contemplating the traumas of the Ceausescu era.
- Kenneth Burns
Potiche
Orpheum main theater, Friday, April 1, 8:15 pm
Franois Ozon (Under the Sand, 8 Women) adapted and directed this comedy, which is set in the 1970s and stars Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu. And what a pleasure it is to see them together! The pair, who first costarred in Truffaut's The Last Metro, play former young lovers. Now middle aged, they live in enemy camps. He's a jaded labor leader, and she's the trophy wife of a craven, philandering industrialist (Fabrice Luchini). When her husband leaves the country, she takes over the factory and introduces some compassion to management's dealings with the staff.
Deneuve is regal and funny, and her chemistry with Depardieu is marvelous. Fate has brought their characters to opposite sides of the bargaining table, but they're gentle with each other. If Deneuve and Depardieu were handling Wisconsin's labor disputes, we'd all be better off.
- Kenneth Burns
Breaking and Entering
Wisconsin Union Theater, Saturday, April 2, 11 am
Some reactions noted during this documentary about the pursuit of various Guinness world records:
That's a mighty big hula hoop/ball of twine/popcorn ball.
A joggling rivalry?!?!?
Reassuring that a few subjects can strike a balance between obsession and some semblance of normal life.
Pity others can't.
What a long-suffering wife/brother/mother/father this record-breaker has.
Remarkable how the Guinness Book of World Records can distort the lives of people who crave acknowledgement/greater self-esteem/immortality/redress of childhood grievances.
Astonishing how the book's proliferation of categories has rendered so many record-holders anonymous and their accomplishments so fleeting and inconsequential.
From about 20 short interwoven profiles, director Benjamin Fingerhut has crafted an entertaining portrait of the human condition.
- David Medaris
A Screaming Man
Orpheum main theater, Saturday, April 2, 1:15 pm
African strife and globalization's discontents loom over this assured domestic drama by the Chadian director and screenwriter Mahamat-Saleh Haroun. A luxury hotel's aging swimming-pool attendant (Youssouf Djaoro) deals with staff cuts even as he faces the toll that armed conflict is taking on his family.
- Kenneth Burns
Louder Than a Bomb
Wisconsin Union Theater, Saturday, April 2, 1:30 pm
In the tradition of Spellbound, this documentary focuses on a few appealing kids who are preparing for a competition - here, a rock-'em sock-'em poetry slam for Chicago high schools. We see troubled teens find their voice, shy teens come out of their shells, and privileged teens discover a whole new side of life. The hopped-up filmmaking matches the subject matter, jumping along to the poetic rhythms. And the poetry itself - well, let's just say that slam's spiritual forefathers, Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, are smiling in hipster heaven. Here's a sample from a force-of-nature hippie visionary named Adam: "Death may be breathless but poetry's deathless so breath be our savior eternal!"
- Dean Robbins
And Everything Is Going Fine
Monona Terrace, Saturday (5:30 pm) & Sunday (6 pm), April 2 & 3
A heartbreaking documentary about Spalding Gray's staggering genius, this is essentially his posthumous final monologue. Director Steven Soderbergh draws on archival footage and his own filmed conversations with Gray as his subject recounts - in that exquisite Rhode Island diction - the signature episodes of his life, from youth to theater, film, renown and tragic decline, stopping shy of his 2004 suicide. The resulting narrative displays Gray's astonishing ability to recover detailed memories and interpolate them into his monologues on the fly. I came away mourning his death anew, wishing Gray was still alive to organize chaos into monologue.
- David Medaris
Wrestling for Jesus: The Tale of T-Money
Bartell Theatre, Saturday, April 2, 5:45 pm
They live in South Carolina, and their wrestling promotion is devoted to spreading the word of God's love. When they're not staging matches in masks and spandex, they're praying and preaching and inviting the saved up to the ring for an altar call.
It's miraculously juicy material, and I can imagine a documentary that commits the fatal mistake of condescending to these people. To his great credit, Madison-based director Nathan Clarke never does. After the sensational opening acts, Clarke focuses perhaps a little too much on the promotion's organizer, whose problems are sad but ordinary. But I understand the choice, and the scenes pay off in a delirious grand finale.
- Kenneth Burns
Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements
Chazen Museum of Art, Saturday, April 2, 6:45 pm
The subtitle of Color Me Obsessed is "the potentially true story of the last best band, the Replacements." Not long into the two-hour documentary, you begin to realize why it's only potentially true: There are no interviews with any of the band members themselves. Indeed, not a note of Replacements music is heard in the film. It's much more a portrait of the band's committed fans, who remain obsessed with not just the music but what the Replacements' loud, sloppy, infectious, often apathetic approach to making it represented.
A two-hour parade of interviews with middle-aged record store owners, promoters, bartenders and fans is daunting, but Gen-Xers from the Midwest, particularly anyone who may have carefully included "Bastards of Young" or "I Will Dare" on a mix tape, will spend the time nodding their heads in agreement. We learn the story of the Minneapolis Police cameo on Stink and which bar Paul Westerberg is referring to in "Here Comes a Regular."
But we also learn about the influential, poignant role the Replacements played in the lives of misfits and self-identified losers who struggled to find their place in Ronald Reagan's early-1980s America. "On top of it all, you had these baby boomers getting in your face saying nothing you'll ever see is going to be as good as the Beatles," says rock critic Jim DeRogatis. "And you're like, 'Fuck you. I just saw the Replacements!'"
- Jason Joyce
Summer Pasture
Wisconsin Union Theater, Sunday, April 3, 11:30 am
A documentary of surpassing beauty set in the high grasslands of eastern Tibet, Summer Pasture transports viewers to remote landscapes where nomads eke out hardscrabble lives - herding yaks amid tensions arising from a modern world encroaching on their isolated subsistence.
Summer Pasture focuses on a young family observing traditions in which everything - milking, churning butter, cooking, tending to the baby, drying yak dung for fuel, collecting water - involves a daily cycle of manual labor as relentless as the serene, verdant foothills where their livestock graze.
"No need to be rich like a king," contends the young patriarch. Yet an impressive hailstorm suggests how fragile this existence is, and a herd gone astray demonstrates how little margin there is to absorb catastrophe. If Summer Pasture feeds your romantic notions regarding nomadic life, it will also disabuse you of them, leaving you to mourn the destiny of simple beauties at risk.
- David Medaris
Win Win
Orpheum main theater, Sunday, April 3, 9 pm
What's that film where Paul Giamatti plays the loser who's unlikable but also, through some miracle of moviemaking, sympathetic? Oh, right, that's most of them, and the formula succeeds again in this enjoyable dramedy written and directed by Tom McCarthy. It's kinda-sorta a sports movie, but don't look for the cheap exaltation that's a cliché of the genre. Giamatti plays Mike, a struggling lawyer and high school wrestling coach who, in a desperate moment, defrauds an elderly man with dementia (Burt Young). It's a severe ethical lapse, and a less clever film wouldn't recover from it. But Win Win works, thanks to Giamatti and a great supporting cast that includes permanently forlorn Jeffery Tambor.
Mike takes in the old man's teenage grandson Kyle, played by first-time film actor Alex Shaffer. He's perfect in this portrayal of a kid who's dealing with a lot of hurt, and who's an improbably good wrestler. A highlight is Bobby Cannavale as Mike's best friend, whose enthusiasm for Kyle's prowess on the mat verges on inappropriate. This feels comically icky but true - some adults do get carried away when it comes to high school athletics.
- Kenneth Burns
