Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here. We’ve got a fair sampling of film festival stuff from around the country today. Here’s a guy sending in three reviews from the Boston Independent Film Festival:
Hey Guys, The Boston Independent Film Festival is still young, but they put together a great lineup of films this year and definitely deserve some more attention. Here's reviews of three of the films I saw thus far. Monster Camp "Good evening fellow geeks," the announcer declared before telling us that the screening had gotten such a good turnout that they were adding another showing the next day. It's a documentary about a Seattle LARPing club, which we are informed is kinda like playing dungeons and dragons...but for real. I was somewhat aware of this phenomenon through a group of students when I was in college that used to dress up in crazy costumes and drive two hours out into the woods every once in a while. During the film, we're introduced to a bunch of different people of various ages who work boring everyday jobs during the week, but a few weekends a year they dawn their homemade armor and capes and trudge out to Monster Camp to become heroes and monsters. Most of the film was shot over one big weekend event. Given that short time, the director was able to capture lots of really hilarious moments. For instance, a father who brings his uninterested teenage daughter to the event and pays her allowance in gold pieces or a monster who stops the battle to recover his glasses. Behind the laughs, there's also a pretty interesting story about the owner of the club, a guy named Shane who came out to the screening, and the people around him that exhaust themselves trying to keep this thing running both over this particular event and from year to year. The director told us after the show that he only just finished the film a month ago so I have no idea what's going to happen with it. It's a smaller scale film than trekkies, but I feel like there's definitely an audience for it. Everyone at the screening got a big kick out of it and I wish them luck getting it out there. FIDO It's the 1950's and America is undergoing a period of relative peace now that the great war is over. No, not THAT war, The Zombie War! Little Timmy is the only kid in his school whose family doesn't have a zombie slave. His dad (Dylan Baker) refuses due to an unfortunate incident in his youth. His Mom (Carrie-Anne Moss) however, finally decides to defy her husband and order one after she finds out the new neighbors have six and can't bear the humiliation of having none. The family's new zombie slave (Billy Connolly) arrives and thus begins the touching story of a boy and his zombie growing up in small town America. It's basically Lassy except with a dog instead of a zombie. The actors all play everything straight and the laughs come just from the pure bizarreness of the world the filmmakers create where every fifth grader takes zombie target practice in school. That's probably the most impressive aspect of the film - the fact that every detail of how this alternate reality 1950's has been worked out. Everyone lives their lives with a smile on like they're in a sitcom, but they also carry revolvers in their cars just in case a zombie's control colar malfunctions or the hordes in the outer zones break down the fence that insulates their town. I don't know if this one has been picked up yet for American distribution and I have a feeling it' may just be too weird for most studios, but definitely check it out if you get the chance. I think its already out in Canada. Also, it was preceded by a Dick and Jane parody called Rabbit that is just the most amazingly strange animated short I think I've ever seen. The Ten This one sold out the main auditorium of the Somerville Theater Saturday night and the crowd didn't stop laughing the entire way through. It's the new movie by those guys from The State and Wet Hot American Summer that are swiftly taking over Hollywood. The set up is basically ten short movies about the Ten Commandments. The put together a great line-up of actors to star in them and most of the characters show up in at least two stories. Winona Rider is probably the best we've seen her since the eighties as a woman who falls for both a sitcom star that's permanently stuck in the ground after jumping out a plane without a parachute(Adam Brody) and later a ventriloquist's dummy. Other standouts are Gretchen Mol, who plays an uptight librarian who finds her sexual awakening while on vacation in Mexico, and Ken Marino and Rob Corddry, who star in the most touching story of prison rape ever put to film. I think this one's already been picked up so everyone should get to see it. -John
