READ OUR 2024 MILWAUKEE FILM FESTIVAL COVERAGE
Like all good things, the Milwaukee Film Festival must come to an end. Thursday marks the final night of cinematic revelry. I’ve enjoyed my time penning this agenda for you all, but alas, I grow weary. And so, much like John Wayne at the end of The Searchers, I must walk off into the wilderness, alone and unloved, to go do cowboy stuff. But before I bid you buckos farewell, here are a few last film picks you should see this week:
1. Close Your Eyes
TUESDAY, APRIL 23 AT 12:15 P.M. | DOWNER THEATRE
A filmmaker tries to uncover the truth about an actor and friend who went missing during the making of one of his movies decades ago. The still for this movie is a picture of a guy pouring some water out of a shoe – I don’t know why, but I like that a lot. I don’t want water in my shoes. It would be nice if there was a guy pouring out all the water that gets in there. You know? I hope he’d be nice about it, and he wouldn’t judge me for always getting so much water in my shoes, and he wouldn’t ask me, you know, what I was doing that I ended up with so much water in there, like was I walking in the lake fully clothed and why would I do that? He would just nicely and quietly pour out the water, and I would say, “Thank you, Thomas.” And he wouldn’t respond because he knows I don’t like talking. Man, that would be cool.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
2. Joan Baez I Am Noise
TUESDAY, APRIL 23 AT 7:30 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
Joan Baez – is she, in fact, noise? Well, you’ll find out at this documentary, which combines concert film and biopic in a “visual memoir.” It includes home movies, diaries, artwork and audio not before seen in public.
3. Concrete Utopia
TUESDAY, APRIL 23 AT 8:45 P.M. | AVALON THEATER
I like to imagine that if there were an apocalypse, I would survive like a cockroach, just crawling my little self under some rock and subsisting off of bugs and my own tears. After the initial mayhem, I would drag myself out from under there, slimy and half-crushed, and emerge into the new world, a twisted scavenger freak, half-insane and ready to party.
Anyway, this South Korean movie is set during the pre-cockroach mayhem stage of an apocalypse, after an earthquake decimates the planet. Only one apartment is left standing in Seoul, and the tenants find themselves at the center of a conflict as survivors from the surrounds seek shelter inside.
4. The Movie Teller
TUESDAY, APRIL 23 AT 1 P.M. | DOWNER THEATRE
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24 AT 6 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
This Spanish comedy-drama follows a girl who has an “uncanny ability” to tell the stories she’s seen in movies, regaling enraptured audiences in her poor, small town with tales of the big screen. Also, Daniel Brühl is in it. I like Daniel Brühl a lot.
5. Ghostlight
THURSDAY, APRIL 25 AT 6 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
This movie stars a real-life acting family – Keith Kupferer, Tara Mallen and their daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer. Also, the cast includes Dolly de Leon aka the hilarious/frightening maid/island ruler from “Triangle of Sadness.” The story follows a depressed construction worker who joins a local theater production of Romeo and Juliet, in the midst of his own family tragedy. The reason I really want to see this is because of the opening of Deadline’s review of the film: “Getting impatient for Kenneth Lonergan to get his act together and make another great movie? Ghostlight should scratch that itch.”
I love Kenneth Lonergan movies – Manchester by the Sea is in consideration for my favorite movie ever – so if this film can “scratch that itch,” I am more than on board.
6. Evil Does Not Exist
MONDAY, APRIL 22 AT 5 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
THURSDAY, APRIL 25 AT 6 P.M. | TIMES CINEMA
Drive My Car was a sleeper hit in 2021, nabbing a best picture nomination at the Oscars. I really enjoyed the literary-minded, melancholic Japanese film, and so I’m excited for Evil Does Not Exist – the next movie by director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. It follows a man and his daughter whose small village is threatened by a new “glamping” development. I also hate “glamping” so this movie seems great.
7. Robot Dreams
THURSDAY, APRIL 25 AT 7:30 P.M. | ORIENTAL THEATRE
This is the way the Milwaukee Film Festival Ends. Not with a bang but a breezy animated dialogue-free movie about a dog that buys a robot. This movie looks cute and weird and fun, and in the media preview for it, one of the MFF programmers assured us that every film festival employee who saw it cried. This intrigues me, as my soul has become a barren wasteland no longer capable of emotional catharsis, and so perhaps Robot Dreams shall awake me from my gray, empty, bland slumber.
