Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a trio of reviews from Santa Barbara. I still have two days left at the festival with only one major movie I'm dying to see: THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. I'm going to be playing a fair amount of catch-up over these couple of days with at least 12 reviews from flicks I have seen. Let's start with these three, eh?
NO LIMIT: A SEARCH FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM ON THE POKER TOURNAMENT TRAIL
I'm addicted to poker, let's get that out of the way first. Specifically Texas Hold 'Em. I love playing my weekly game, love that thrill of discovery when you stumble upon how to make a certain betting strategy work in my favor, I love the chance aspect of it all and seeing how far I can push luck aside and win without it. I can also watch poker being played on TV for days on end.
So, it was a natural for me to pick out a documentary about a lady who documents her trip along the Tournament Poker trail.
The good about this documentary: The filmmakers talk to all the legends of the game. Annie Duke, Howard Lederer, Phil Gordon, Scott Nguyen, Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, DevilFish, etc.
I loved this aspect of the documentary. It made me want to see a full blown documentary made just talking to the top minds of the poker world as they dissect the game, the appeal of the game and the strategy of the game. And tell their own personal poker stories (Brunson briefly relates a story in the documentary where he was playing poker back in the day and a man stormed in and shot one of the other players at the table right between the eyes) for that matter.
The bad: The subject of the documentary is a very whiny lady who once won a few tournaments (supposedly) who decides to try to raise funds for her and her ex-husband's production company by entering 6 different Poker Tournaments. The idea being that if they win just one, it'll pay for this film as well as get a feature production off the ground.
Her game of choice is Omaha, which I know of, but, as a player, not familiar with. Instead of taking any time to show us the game or the inherent drama duking it out at a tournament table (where the buy-ins range from $500 plus to almost $2,000) they focus on this lady just getting beat at the table and then blaming everything but her playing. "It was that damn river card... You put your unlucky shirt on the back of my chair! I didn't get any cards!" Those three phrases are repeated at least a dozen times throughout the documentary.
It's clear to me that she wasn't betting. How can you win if you just call? The reason people were pulling straights on the river card was because she didn't put any pressure on her opponents and force them to give up on their straight or flush draws. She was bragging about losing the minimum... which is all well and good, but she was losing the minimum because she was betting the minimum.
Yet it was always bad mojo or bad luck or anybody and everybody else's fault.
I don't want to watch that for 2 hours.
They aren't able to record what the hands are during the tournament play, so her games are all about her, not the cards. Being that I don't like her I didn't have much to grab on to for the majority of the documentary.
Loved hearing the Poker Stars tell stories and discuss the game for about 20% of the documentary, though. Maybe somebody will pick up that thread and make something that's worth watching.
DUCK SEASON (Temporada de patos)
This flick out of Mexico is a sweet little story of two 14 year olds who get the day to be home alone. They pop in their Halo, debate who gets to play as "Osama" and who gets to be "Bush" and then proceed to hunt and destroy each other. "Bush killed Osama" and vice-versa appears on the screen...
Then their simple day home alone to fuck around with their XBox, drink massive amounts of Coca Cola and just be teenagers gets really, really complicated.
The cute 16 year old next door neighbor comes over and asks to use their kitchen. At first the boys send her away, but she's persistent and not wanting to be away from the game too long, they concede and let her in. After a couple more minutes of playing the power goes out.
The look on their faces is something that can only be described as lost. They sit, dumbfounded, for minutes. Silent. The phone still works, so they decide to call for a Pizza, timing the pizza delivery man for the "30 minutes or under or it's free."
Let's just say there's a debate on the part of the tardiness of the pizza and all of a sudden there's a middle-aged pizza delivery man thrown into the equation when he just sits down and refuses to leave until he's paid.
The film is first and foremost a comedy, with pinches of coming of age drama (surprisingly complex drama, I might add) and quirkiness thrown in for good measure. Maybe it is because the film is in black and white, but the tone really reminded me of CLERKS. It's not nearly as funny, but it has that same mix of low budget character study, extreme quirkiness and rough-around-the-edges, but obviously talented freshman filmmaking.
The brownies scene had me laughing out loud.
It looks like this flick will get a limited release (NY and LA) March 10th. If you like your non-studio foreign character comedies, then you should definitely not pass this flick up. If you just like a good movie, this one's up your alley, too.
SCHOOL DAZE (Sekuru deizu)
School Daze is a new comedy out of Japan that takes a typically skewered comedic look at child stars. The film opens with a close up of a newborn sucking on a titty. After holding uncomfortably on that for at least a minute we pull out to reveal a film crew shooting that scene. The director yells cut and then we're treated to a crazy opening credits montage that shows how this newborn is one of the most famous actors in Japan, with directors and stars talking to the camera, telling us why this actor has it.
We see him grow to about the age of 5, getting more and more famous. Then divorce threatens his child-star parents and he quits acting.
We next see him in high school. His growth was awkward and his fame made him a target. He's introverted, shy and bullied many times a day. His best friend talks him into trying the acting game again when a popular show holds casting calls for high school kids for the next season. His reading is very good, but he is hired based on his past popularity.
The rest of the movie is a kind of melding of realities. On the TV show he plays a bullied character who is protected by his hero teacher (Tanabe Seiichi) and the strong friendship of his classmates. In reality he's the bullied character with almost no friends, no support structure, no hero teacher. In fact, his real life teacher is a dickhead who punishes him for being bullied.
Our lead starts idolizing this actor who he appeared with onscreen in the first season of the show when he was a child. That memory comes to the surface and that's when reality really starts to be stretched thin.
I hate to suggest another dreaded remake, but I think this film isn't really strong enough to be widely recognized over here or weird enough to grab a large cult following. However, the idea is really damn interesting and I think more can be done with it than the first time filmmakers do in this flick.
Definitely worth a view for lovers of all things Asian Cinema. Not sure what's going on with it, but I'd bet it's going to be out there at film fests and on specialty DVD labels soon enough.
That's it for this round. I have about 10 more films and events to talk about and one more day at the festival, so keep your eye out for my continuing coverage!
-Quint
