Alright moviegoers, it’s time to buckle down. We’re entering the final stretch of the 2011 Milwaukee Film Festival, and there’s still plenty of opportunities left over the next three days to catch cinematic fare from around the world – not to mention from right here at home.
Last night, The Milwaukee Show took place at the Oriental Theatre. It’s part of this year’s Cream City Cinema program, the festival’s annual showcase of the best new work from local filmmakers. Nine short films and 10 filmmakers in total were featured.
Most of the shorts that comprised this year’s Milwaukee Show program were made by filmmakers with ties to UW-Milwaukee’s film program, which was named one of the 25 best film schools in the world by The Hollywood Reporter in July. And in May, six shorts from faculty, students and alumni of the Peck School of the Arts screened at the Cannes International Film Festival, which is widely regarded as the premiere film festival.
Not too shabby for a film program that emphasizes off-the-cuff, guerilla-style experimental filmmaking over the more traditional narrative-propelled fare that comes out of film schools located in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.
With no further ado, here are my film recommendations for the remaining three days of MFF 2011.
Friday, September 30th
First things first. Any filmmaker who has the cojones to title their film “Asshole” (which is also the lead character’s name when translated from Bengali to English) is owed mad props – all the more so if the film in question looks as intriguing as Kaushik Mukherjee’s Gandu. According to festival press materials, “This ain’t your mother’s Bollywood flick.” So those of you expecting Mother India or some elaborate, tonal-shifting comedy/drama with out-of-left-field musical numbers that make Tyler Perry’s often-schizophrenic chitlin circuit plays look lazy by comparison will be in for a huge shock. The decidedly gritty film, concerning a wayward youth on the tough urban streets of Kolkata, India, makes its debut tonight at midnight at the Oriental, and it screens one additional time over the weekend on Sunday, October 2nd at 9:30 p.m. at North Shore Cinema in Mequon. The film is in Bengali with English subtitles.
Already having played the festival once last week Friday, Outrage is the latest from celebrated Japanese filmmaker and actor Takeshi Kitano (Brother, Boiling Point) who makes a welcome return to his gangster film roots. Kitano pulls quadruple duty on the film as director, writer, star and co-editor. He plays a Yakuza crime boss who’s double-crossed by a once-loyal henchman who joins forces with a rival crime syndicate. Kitano’s retaliation over the betrayal triggers a bloody city-wide rampage in the streets and corridors of modern-day Tokyo. The film screens at 7:15 p.m. at the Ridge in New Berlin, and once more during the festival at 9:15 p.m. on Sunday, October 2nd at North Shore Cinema. It’s in Japanese with English subtitles.
The last of this year’s Cream City Cinema offerings, Points of Interest, screens tonight at 9:30 p.m. at the Oriental. The film chronicles the directors’ road trip odyssey with two bands, local favorite Juniper Tar and Pennsylvania’s Strand of Oaks, as they trek along the East Coast on tour. Directors Jon Salimes and Anthony Lopez, whose previous effort, The Death of Triforce, played the festival last year, will be attendance for the film’s one-time festival showing.
And world-renowned, Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond will be honored with this year’s lifetime achievement award tonight following a special festival screening of the film that brought him Oscar gold, director Steven Spielberg’s 1978 masterpiece Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Vilmos will participate in a Q&A session following the screening scheduled for 7 p.m. tonight at the Oriental. Tickets to the event are still available.
Saturday, October 1st
If you possibly can make the early afternoon (2:15 p.m.) screening of director Mark Rydell’s seminal film The Rose, do so. It’s one of the greatest music-driven dramas ever made. Making her big screen debut, Bette Midler gives a virtuoso performance as a hard living rock ‘n’ roll singer (loosely inspired by one of Midler’s contemporaries, the late-Janis Joplin) whose excess hasn’t so much led her to the palace of wisdom but instead lead her perilously close to the great abyss. Midler won two Golden Globes and was Oscar-nominated for her work here. And say what you will about her subsequent big screen work, Midler’s work in The Rose is damn near unparalleled. It’ll be a miracle for whatever actress finally gets a Janis Joplin biopic before cameras to equal or top Midler’s achievement. The late-Alan Bates, Frederic Forrest, Harry Dean Stanton, David Keith, and Doris Roberts co-star. The film is screening as part of the festival’s lifetime achievement tribute to Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, who shot the film, including the truly amazing concert sequences.
If you missed the first screening of The Dish & The Spoon starring rising star Greta Gerwig (Arthur, Greenberg, No Strings Attached), do yourself a favor and catch the 7:15 p.m. screening at the Downer on Saturday night. Gerwig is excellent as a jilted wife who strikes up an unexpected relationship with a stranded British teen. And even though sitting through a 4 ½ hour costume drama isn’t everyone’s idea of a fun time at the movies (myself included), I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Saturday will be the last opportunity to catch Mysteries of Lisbon, the last film from veteran Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, who died in August at age 70. The lush-looking period piece screens on Saturday, October 1 at noon at North Shore Cinema. Don’t worry, the screening includes a 15-minute intermission.
And two documentaries debut on Saturday that might be of interest: Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel’s (the late film critic Gene Siskel’s nephew) Louder Than A Bomb, which casts a light on a youth poetry slam event held in our sister city of Chicago, and A Good Man from filmmakers Bob Hercules and Gordon Quinn which chronicles Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones’ creation of a theater piece that pays homage to President Abraham Lincoln’s legacy. The creative process almost always makes for riveting viewing, particularly when it shows young, raw creative minds at work or experienced showmen challenging themselves when they no longer really have to. Louder Than A Bomb debuts at 5:15 p.m. at the Oriental and repeats on Sunday, October 2nd at 7:15 p.m. at the Ridge Cinema in New Berlin. A Good Man screens at 7:45 p.m. at the Oriental and repeats at 12:15 p.m. at North Shore Cinema in Mequon.
Sunday, October 2nd
I highly recommend the festival’s closing night film, director-writer-star Mathieu Amalric’s On Tour (Tournée). Amalric won the Cannes International Film Festival’s award for Best Director, as well as the Critics’ Prize, for his thoroughly entertaining love letter to the world of burlesque, new and old. On Tour is what the box office bomb (yet, soon-to-be camp classic) Burlesque foolishly thought it was. The film screens at 7:15 p.m. at the Oriental Theatre, and is in French and English with English subtitles.
Tickets are $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and students (with valid ID), $8 for festival members and $6 for children (12 and under). Tickets can be purchased either at the theater box office, online or by phone.
For additional information about the schedule, venue locations, pricing, and scheduled events, visit milwaukee-film.org.
