Saturday, April 25th
The final day of the festival started off strong with Faded Glory (***), a documentary about a semi-pro baseball player that tries to get his old team back together so they can win the National Amateur Baseball Association World Series. The team consists of guys who have known each other for 18+ years, and many of them involved in the entertainment industry. One of them had a role in Little Big League. One of them is a network news weatherman. And one of them is poker player Chad Brown. It was directed by Richard Cohen, who is the player organizing the team, giving the film a nice first person perspective and a likeable guy to root for. Like Pip & Zastrow, I appreciate the film's willingness ot explore negative aspects of the people involved in the film, even the director's own issues are exposed. Cohen does a terrific job of showing the baseball action, making it very easy to follow and perfectly capturing the drama of the event. This works just like a really good underdog sports movie, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it made into a Hollywood movie down the line.
This was followed by another strong documentary called Neshoba (***1/2). This is about the efforts of the citizens in Philadelphia, Mississippi to get the state to proescute Edgar Ray Killen, the man largely thought to be responsible for the murders of three civil rights workers, an event that was dramatized in the film Mississippi Burning. The film includes interviews with the victim's survivors and various people in the town. What really sets this film apart is that the director gets an amazing amount access to Edgar Ray Killen, even during the trial. He is very blunt about his feelings of the events, going so far as to blaming the victim's parents for letting them go on the trip. The director also gets great footage of the trial, including some priceless reaction shots of Killen during testimony where he clearly mouths some cuss words. This is an expertly made documentary with superior editing that really delves into a frightening part of our history.
The closing night film was a Mexican feature called Rudo y Cursi (**) from director Carlos Cuaron. He's the brother of Alfonso Cuaron, who made Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Children of Men. It features the two stars of Y Tu Mama Tambien (Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal) as brothers who play soccer in a small Mexican town. They get recruited by a talent scout who takes them both to the big city and big league club play. The story follows their ups and downs playing professional soccer and also how they struggle to adapt to big city life. This was a huge disappointment. The idea sounds good, but Cuaron is clearly not as talented as his brother. The pacing is way off, as Cuaron goes from scene to scene cutting at all the wrong moments. There is absolutely no flow to the story, and many events are randomly skipped over. What we do get to see is a bunch of cliches (seduction of gambling, sibling jealousy, financial issues). The biggest oddity is that Cuaron shows very little soccer action. One of the brothers is about to set the record for most shutouts in a row, but we hardly get to see any of that until the very end. The two leads are very strong actors, and Guillermo Francella gives a memorable character performance as the talent scout, but they cannot make up for this heavily flawed film.
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