"Oh Lucy"
Four paragraphs from now, I will get to the task at hand, delivering my thoughts about five movies I saw over the weekend at the Wisconsin Film Festival, all of which will be showing again before the fest closes on April 19. Movies that you might want to check out. First, I’m going to give a review of five other films I saw over the weekend, the five film fest five trailers that appeared before the movies.
Traditionally, WFF runs a trailer before each movie that lists the sponsors and staff. The first time audience members see the preview, they find it delightful. But, as the festival continues, it grows more and more grating, until it becomes an endurance test to sit through it. The 90-second short begins to feel as long as a late-period David Lean epic. It’s no fault of the trailers, just the repetition.
They have solved this problem by filming performances by 12 different local artists doing 12 different versions of the same song about the film festival. At any given movie, the audience might hear any of these dozen songsters, and, by god, does it work. By my third movie, I was looking forward to seeing who’d be playing this time. I saw a ukelele player, a grunge trio, a bluegrass band, a rap song and a female jazz crooner; she even included a joke about the awkwardness of the name of the former Sundance theater: AMC Dine-In Madison 6 — a name so wordy that it annoys this very writer (who gets paid by the word).
So, keep at it, WFF. It’s worth the investment. Now, as promised, here are five movies that are playing again.
Mademoiselle Paradis, Mon. April 9, AMC Madison 6, 2:15 pm
Maria Theresia Paradis was a blind musical prodigy who regained her sight in 1770s Vienna. But, with sight comes clarity. Was she merely a curiosity because of her handicap? Does her new ability make her strange or common? Why do so few people trust that she can see? And has everyone she’s ever trusted always been such jerks? Young Ms. Paradis gains a lot of wisdom quickly, but few people around her really care. Paradis has a lot to say about class, gender and science, yet it spells nothing out in simple terms. If all that isn’t enough to lure you in, then try it just for the performance of Maria Dragus, who straight up tricked me into thinking that she was really blind.
American Animals, Mon. April 9, AMC Madison 6, 8:30 pm
True story. The college boys in this fun little heist movie watch other movies to learn how to commit the perfect crime: Reservoir Dogs,The Killing, Rififi, etc. Director Bart Layton clearly watched movies to learn how tell true crime stories from multiple perspectives: Casino, The Big Short, American Hustle, etc. I do not intend to damn the movie as derivative — because all art is derivative. I am just saying we need a word for this quasi-docu-crime-comedy style, which is becoming more popular every year. The key difference between American Animals and its precursors is that Layton knows how to make crime not look glamorous. Crime is hard, it’s sloppy, and you end up in jail. This movie rides high on the thrill of youth, but it knows that the greater the high the greater the crash, and when the hangover comes to our heroes, man does it hurt.
Hitler’s Hollywood, Tues. April 10, AMC Madison 6, 1:30 pm
Before I get to this one, let me just remind you how cold it was on Saturday. I was heading to the Memorial Union to see RBG, but I decided to go to this movie at the Chazen because I wouldn’t have to walk the extra block.
In today’s era of daily revelations about the dark pasts of artists, it can be hard to figure out what to watch. Do you damn a movie because one of the creators was a monster? That seems a bit harsh. How about if all of the creators were monsters? What if the entire industry for over a decade was top-to-bottom monsters? That’s the topic of Hitler’s Hollywood. Common perception of this era of German film boils down to Triumph of the Will (“Germans are the best!”) and Jud Suss (“Hey Germans, let’s kill the Jews!”). I cannot say with certainty whether this documentary is arguing that we continue ignoring Nazi-era films or that they deserve a degree of reassessment, but there is a wistful strain to this movie toward legitimately great artists whose careers never recovered from backing the most wrong horse ever.
Oh Lucy!, Tues. April 10, AMC Madison 6, 6:15 pm
There is a lot going on in this simple story of a middle-aged Japanese woman (a stunning Shinobu Terajima) who makes one last mad dash at life before it’s too late. It’s a road trip saga, a love story, a sibling rivalry, an inter-generational battle, a culture-clash comedy (Japan vs. USA), a psychodrama and a deep tragedy. If I had to pin it down to one genre, I’d say it’s a coming-of-age story, but the heroine is 45 years old. So many themes usually make for an unsteady foundation to build a film on, but it all weaves together seamlessly in a manner that one might call Lady Birdesque if one was into coining terms one can only use once in one’s lifetime. Though Will Ferrell serves as one of the executive producers, don’t go in expecting Will Ferrell material.
The Guilty, Thur. Apr 12, AMC Madison 6, 4:30 pm
A cop in desperate need of redemption tries to save a kidnapped woman. This sounds more like a TV movie potboiler than a film fest pick. Well, get this: He’s doing it all by phone. Still not convinced? Well, how about this: It’s all from the cop’s point of view and plays out in real time. He’s pretty much the only character we see, and all the other characters are voices on the phone. Well, you (erudite filmgoer that you are) say, now that’s just gimmickry. I am here to tell you, it is not. This Danish thriller is told this way because it is the most exciting way to tell the story. I have rarely been as tense in a movie theater as I was while watching a man listening to another cop searching an unseen apartment. The Guilty strips film down to a room, a face, and voices coming from the dark on the other end of a phone line.
Or how about this: Go watch anything. The WFF runs until Thursday. Stop lamenting the fact that all new movies are superhero movies, because that’s not a fact. There are two dozen new films playing in Madison this week, all superhero free. Except for RBG (Wednesday, AMC Madison 6, 3:45 pm) That one’s a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and she’s basically an elder female Captain America.
