It's been a few weeks. I'm almost sobered up now, so it's time to finish writing up the final weekend of Cinequest
I didn't quite get out of work in time for IT'S HARD TO BE HUMAN, so my apologies to those filmmakers. Instead I checked into my hotel room and then went over to the VIP soiree at Gordon Biersch. Punch was free, but beer required a ticket (you get two for free,) and I learned I'm kinda well known, as it seems like everyone who didn't want a beer was handing me their spare tickets. I didn't even use them all, but rest assured I was well toasted.
Which might explain why I kind of had a hard time following SEVEN SPLINTERS IN TIME (aka OMPHALOS.) Well, that and I'm trying to recall it 3 weeks later. Time travel, juggling, hat tricks, and murder. It was weird. And you know what, I'm not even going to try to understand it. The visuals were great, and I could tell it had a sense of humor, but my mind was too dulled to follow it. But it has been picked up by Gravitas, and will have a theatrical and VOD release in July. So I'll catch it again and see if it makes sense when I see it sober-ish and rested-ish.
But apparently I sobered up enough for the next one, because BAREFOOT is easily a masterpiece. WWII through the eyes of a kid. While of course the horrors of war are all around, for Eda the major disruption is his family having to move out of cosmopolitan Prague and into his father's childhood village home. There the kids run around barefoot and make fun of his fancy shoes (although they don't say much about his funny looking cross cap headband, which I learned later is a regular sweatband before the days of elastic where a cross of fabric over the head kept it from slipping down over his head.) Once there, he meets the local kids, tries to fit in, makes friends, becomes kind of a celebrity among the kids, and plays a lot. And their play is often about the war. It's an interesting observation of how kids play isn't just...playing. It's the way that kids understand the world. But in this world, it's also just a weirdly adorable war story.
And finally I ended the night with the midnight movie, DON'T OPEN YOUR EYES. A home care nurse is quickly over his head in this mood-based film horror film. Agnes is critically ill. Annie has been taking care of her, but needs to get away for a while, and hires John to watch over her. But the place might be haunted. There are noises which might be spirits. And it's isolated (with no cell phone coverage, of course) and it's getting colder. Agnes isn't going to survive the winter, so she puts John is a religious and moral bind by asking him to just bury her before the ground freezes so the spirits won't get her. A well made, spooky film about some difficult questions of faith.
And then I went back to my hotel room, drank a glass of milk, read a few pages in the Bible, and went right to bed. Ha ha, nope! I had guests up there and drank until 4 am, like usual!
Total Running Time: 286 minutes
My Total Minutes: 474,019
No comments:
Post a Comment