Okay, no time for full reviews of the movies I saw, but here is a snapshot. A pretty good year, all in all, although I didn’t have as many heart-stopping overpowering movie moments as I have had in the past–maybe because I saw fewer films by myself.
View movie summaries on official festival website.
Lower City – raw emotions seethe in brilliant, equilateral love triangle in Brazil’s poorest city. powerful ending.
All About Love – Andrew Lau x2 in competent Hong Kong melodrama
You Are My Sunshine – S. Korea. Bumbling farmer falls for hooker. A cinematic response to the movie “One Fine Spring Day”
Le Petit Lieutenant – French cop drama that you can sink your teeth into. Deeply satisfying.
The Wayward Cloud – Oh. My. God. Taiwanese master best movie yet is a pornographic musical.
Princess Racoon – Seijun Suzuki and Zhang Ziyi was a guaranteed good time.
Heaven and Earth Magic – early experiment film collages no match for live band accompaniment: Deerhoof rules!
Runner’s High – a well done documentary about high school running program in poor Oakland. Fun for runners.
State of Cinema: Tilda Swinton – Best thing I saw at the festival – Tilda’s amazing speech about why we watch movies. ( Transcript )
Three Times -Triptych tells 3 love stories and Taiwan’s history. I want to see this again.
Look Both Ways – First feature from Aussie animator. A love story in a world of disasters.
Taking Father Home – Fascinating look at a boy and his father, and life in modern China outside of the capitals. The director’s Q&A was even more interesting–a movie made independently in China, completely non-commercial and non-censored.
Sa-kwa – Korean movie follows a woman through a breakup, marriage and childbirth as she struggles to understand love. Actress from ‘Oasis’ and ‘Good Lawyer’s Wife’ with another powerful performance. First time director. (another incredibly inane Q&A session.)
Clouds of Yesterday – Japanese film harks back to the silent film era.
Manslaughter – I’ll see this tonight. Third in a Danish trilogy about social classes. I saw the second film in the serious at SFIFF a few years ago, and it was powerful, as well as devastating. Looking forward to this one.