Tuesday, April 21
Today started off with a major disappointment. I Am the Bluebird (*) had a very interesting story idea, but was poorly executed in every possible way. Ethan Galloway awakens in a hospital with temporary memory loss. He slowly begins remembering things, but one thing that remains is a mystery is a photograph of a beautiful girl, and no one will tell him who it is. As he begins following, he starts to uncover the missing pirces from his memory and why he had memory loss in the first place. This seemed like it could have been really interesting, like a more serious version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. However, the movie is just flat out terrible. You'll often find bad acting in indie films, but rarely is an entire cast as wooden and blank as the people in this film. That makes it impossible to care about the story, but the story isn't worth caring about anyways. It's a mystery that unfolds at a deadly slow pace and falls flat when you finally get there. What a terrible way to start the day.
The next one was a surprise. Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist (***) is a documentary that follows several grad students as they struggle with advanced experiments while attempting to get their PHD's. From that description, it sure doesn't sound like a fun movie, but the director did a terrific job making this accessible and humorous to keep the audience interested. The story is almost framed in a sports underdog format, focusing mainly on one older grad student named Rob who has struggled for 4 years (dropping out several times) on one specific experiment involving the protein that controls appetite. It follows his struggle to develop crystals so data can be extracted and analyzed. This may not sound like exciting subject matter, but I found myself deeply immersed in this world, rooting for Rob to complete his experiment. Rob is an ingratiating person, who really fits the "obsessed" part of the title, and his idioisyncrasies add alot of humor to the film. This one really caught me off guard, but it was fun and rewarding.
And here we go! Every year at the festival, there is at least one movie that truly stands out from everything else and this year it is 500 Days of Summer (****). This is a fucking fantastic film that succeeds in every single way. It follows Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a man who dreams to be an architect but instead ends up writing for a greeting card company. He instantly falls for Summer (Zooey Deschanel, looking better than ever), a new employee at the company. The structure is really interesting. It follows 500 days of their relationship, but keeps shifting back and forth to different days within that 500, mixing happy moments with sad ones. And there is plenty of both in this bittersweet film. There are numerous laugh out loud comic moments, including a hilarious dance sequence performed to Hall & Oates' "You Make My Dreams". Levitt (who is building a nice movie resume) is completely winning as the everyman who is hopelessly in love with a girl that says she doesn't want commitment, and Deschanel gets one of her best roles to date, her stunning screen presence is a given but the offbeat personality that Deschanel injects makes the character even more appealing. The narrator warns at the beginning that this is not a love story, but I would argue that it is actually one of the most truthful love stories ever made.
The night concluded with That Evening Sun (***1/2), which had been given an additional screening because it won the festival's grand jury prize (note: not all films are in competition, so 500 Days was not eligible for this award). This film follows Abner Meecham (Hal Holbrook), an elderly man who leaves his nursing home and goes back to the farm where he spent most of his life. When he gets there, he finds it occupied by the detestable Lonzo Choat and his family. Abner is determined to get his farm back, and begins a war of wills with Lonzo that slowly escalates into danger. This film captures the feel of the rural south very well, and the patient way it moves throught he plot allows the actors (especially Holbrook) to create fascinating characters. It's the type of carefully studied role that could get Holbrook an Oscar nomination. The screenplay by writer-director Scott Teems contains precise, mature dialogue and fully developed characters. I don't know what to make of the ending, which doesn't really tie things up the way I would've liked, but this is still an extremely well made film told in an old-fashioned style.
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