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It’s a bit past 2009, but not too late for a retrospective on the best movies I saw that year (most of which were foreign). Without further ado:

1. Yang Yang – 5 stars

   This Taiwanese film is the second by virtuoso director and Ang Lee protégé Cheng Yu-Chieh, and is just about perfect. It is a gorgeous and subtle film—far and away the best movie I saw in 2009.

2. Heaven’s Heart – 5 stars

   This was a Swedish movie actually made in 2008 that I saw in SFIFF 2009, and is drama at its finest. Intense and brilliant.

3. His Wedding – 5 stars

   This radiant Korean short film made the best use of split screen I’ve ever seen and was poignant without descending into the melodrama so much of Korean cinema is prone to. I would love to see a feature-length project from this director.

4. Star Trek – 5 stars

   This is the only Hollywood movie to make it onto my list. J.J. Abrams’ adaptation of the classic series is my favorite Star Trek movie of all time (yes, even better than the previous undisputed champion, The Wrath of Khan).

5. All Around Us – 4 stars

   This one is from Japan, and was the clear standout of SFIAAFF 2009. It was distinguished by its smart script and terrific acting. Highly recommended.

Honorable mentions:

• Can Go Through Skin – 4 stars

  This Dutch movie is the art film, done right. Very high production value and an experimental but superbly effective sound design are the hallmarks of this film. Very highly recommended.

• Claustrophobia – 4 stars

  This movie, hailing from Hong Kong, was made by a screenwriter-turned-director, and it shows. The script is terrific. Make sure to see this one if you can.

What were some of your favorites?

here’s the final set of reviews for SFIAAFF 2009:

• All Around Us – 4 stars

  This movie was the clear standout of the festival. It was an intense, understated drama with a terrific cast and a smart script. Though it became a bit tedious near the end, the movie on the whole was excellent. Highly recommended.

• Tokyo! – 3 stars

  One of the other lessons we’ve learned through bitter experience is this: never watch a triptych. Anything with three stories sucks. This wasn’t nearly as bad as Love for Share or 3 Needles, nor yet as mediocre as Three Times, though one of the three films featured in this particular triptych, the one in the middle, was flat out terrible. I mean really awful. The first movie, directed by Michel Gondry, was charming and entertaining, and the third, directed by Joon-ho Bong (of The Host fame) was simply the most gorgeously filmed movie at the festival, and the best-filmed movie I had seen in quite some time.

Film festival season has rolled around again, and I’m in the midst of SFIAAFF 2009. Before I dive into the movie reviews, let me share a bit of the wisdom (?) I’ve gleaned over my past 8 years (Really. At least one a year since 2001.) as a film festival attendee.

• Never read the long film guide. Each movie’s description will always be glowing, because it’s most likely written by the person who picked the film for the festival. It will also likely tell you too much about the movie; I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to know what happens before I actually watch the movie. For all these reasons, I usually make all my movie-going decisions from the mini-guide alone. One or two sentences and the picture is usually enough for me.
• Look out for certain red flags in the description:
  • existential = depressing
  • nuanced = boring
  • important = a self-important, preachy, condescending political statement that nevertheless manages to insult your intelligence at the same time.
• Never, under any circumstances, ever see a movie that has won the Grand Jury prize at another festival. It is most likely “important,” or “nuanced,” or—the horror!— “existential.” Also, it is not a “movie.” It is a “film.” It is, without exception, a piece of cinema that is weighed down by its own pomposity and bombast, and so far out of touch with the primary purpose of the movies—to entertain, for God’s sake—as to be laughable. Once you stop crying.
• By contrast, any movie that has won an audience award has a pretty good chance of being enjoyable and entertaining. A good bet.
• It’s not a good film festival until you see something truly awful. I mean, something so terrible that it makes you want to tear your eyes out of your head and wish you’d spent that time clipping your toenails instead, because at least you’d have gotten something out of the time you spent. It’s not really a complete film festival experience without the crap.

(more…)

The festival is now over, and overall was one of the best ones I’ve seen.

• Desert Dream – 3 stars
  Low 3. At first I thought I liked this movie better than director Zhang Lu’s previous offering, Grain in Ear, but now I’m not so sure. I wasn’t a big fan of that movie, and I wasn’t a big fan of this one, and I think it’s to do with Lu’s directorial style.

  He has his actors deliver their lines with almost no expression or inflection, preferring to let the viewer guess at the undertones through the context. In that sense, Dream did a better job than Grain, was in fact more engaging overall, but some confusing plotting and some incomprehensible (well, at least to someone who is not Chinese or Mongolian) symbology just left me cold.

  In general, while what Lu attempts could potentially be very successful and is certainly intriguing, I don’t really think he’s gotten there yet; in order for his methodology to work, I think that the situation the characters are in needs to be so emotionally fraught, so distressing, that the deadpan actors serve as a soothing counterpoint as well as adding a fine tension to the story, of control barely leashed over powerful emotions. Far better than Grain in Ear, this film shows that potential, but as I said, I don’t think Lu’s there yet.

• Flight of the Red Balloon – 4 stars

  What a great way to end the festival! Acclaimed Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao Hsien’s latest offering, this movie was beautifully realized, with the gratifyingly high production value I’ve come to expect from him.

  Hou is a master of light, and this movie was the fruition of the potential in 2003′s Café Lumière, capturing the warm, magical quality of afternoon light in Paris. Lead actress and French cinematic darling Juliette Binoche acted the quietly emotional storyline (Hou’s tensest by far) with typical aplomb and undeniable skill; she is a master in her own right. Hou and Binoche together are a formidable combination, and the result is a gorgeous, warm film that I will definitely be looking for on DVD when it is released. Very highly recommended.

Coming soon: SFIFF 51!

• Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara – 5 stars

  This is probably my favorite movie of the festival thus far, though it wasn’t quite as tightly produced as Planet B-Boy. A dreamy and contemplative look at the inner life of acclaimed artist Yoshitomo Nara, this documentary followed him to his exhibitions in various cities around the world, culminating in the magical AtoZ exhibit in Hirosaki, Japan, his hometown. Tragically, the exhibit is now closed, preventing me from ever exploring it in person, which saddens me more than I can say.

  The movie was bittersweet and beautiful, and gave me a deep appreciation for an artist whom I might never otherwise have taken the time to notice. Wonderful.

• Always Be Boyz – 2 stars

  I probably would have been—a bit, though not much—more sympathetic to this movie had I not seen it so very soon after Planet B-Boy, to which it paled in comparison. While I will grant that the acting and script weren’t actually that bad (a hell of a lot better than the similarly pop-culture-underworld-themed Quattro Noza, heretofore the third worst film festival movie I’ve ever seen, after Sorry, Haters and Blackout), infantile plotting, extremely low production value (think Powerpoint-style transitions and iMovie effects, not to mention the use of the abominable Comic Sans as the subtitle font) and severe projection problems (the sound kept cutting out; I can’t tell whether this was the fault of a bad DVD print or the projectionist at theater itself) fairly ruined this movie experience for me.

  If you really want to learn about Korean b-boy culture, watch Planet B-Boy instead; it has more intelligence, drama and pathos than this fictional drama ever could.

• A Gentle Breeze in the Village – 4 stars

  I will admit I was expecting a lot from this movie, considering it was directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita, the same man who directed Linda Linda Linda, one of my favorite movies of the last few years. I will also admit that I was a bit disappointed; it’s not as good as Linda³, but has its own charm.

  Gently humorous and relaxingly paced, this movie was strongly reminiscent of Shunji Iwai’s Hana and Alice, though not ultimately as good. Yamashita possesses a measure of Iwai’s skill at working with young actors, and it shows in this movie, but while it possessed charm in abundance, it lacked the brilliant hilarity of its predecessor. Very good, but not awesome.

• Yasukuni – 3 stars

  This documentary was by far the most thought-provoking one of the festival, exposing as it did the festering wound under Japan’s serene exterior, centered at Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, the simultaneous symbol of the nation’s pride and its shame. Director Li Ying took a very interesting approach to this film, using long, unedited takes that started out serene and almost boring (I fell asleep a couple of times), and then exploded into conflict.

  The film was profoundly disturbing, and had the most impact of any movie I’ve seen in a good long while, but had two big drawbacks for me: the cheesily-scored montage of Japanese wartime brutality near the end of the film, and the unnecessarily shaky camerawork (I had to look away to keep from losing my dinner more than once).

• Amal – 4 stars

  This is the best Indian movie I’ve seen in the last 5 years, and it was directed by an Indian who was born and raised in Canada (Richie Mehta, whose brother, Shaun, wrote the short story upon which it was based). Astonishingly well made for a debut film, if a trifle predictable, Amal boasted some powerhouse acting talent, including Naseeruddin Shah and Roshan Seth, and painted a sympathetic and painfully accurate picture of modern India.

  You may have heard me say before that I generally am disappointed by director Q&As at film festivals, because the directors are invariably less interesting than their films, and tend to express themselves best in that medium rather than in speech, which has the unfortunate effect of removing some of the lustre from the film itself. Not so with Amal. Mehta is intelligent and well-spoken, and his commentary about the film and its production really enhanced the experience for me; I look forward to the extras on the DVD. He is definitely a director to watch.

Just two more movies to go!

It has begun. SFIAAFF 2008 has gotten off to an excellent but at the same time rocky start; excellent because each of the three features I’ve seen so far has been better than the last, and rocky because they just don’t seem to be very organized.

First, the movies:

• Wings of Defeat – 3 stars

  We’re seeing an unprecedented number of documentaries—almost half of our planned 12 showings—this year, and this was the first. A documentary about the Japanese kamikaze pilots in WWII, as told by those of them still living, the subject matter was fascinating and given a delicate, sure-handed treatment by filmmakers Risa Morimoto and Linda Hoaglund. Employing a scrupulously nonjudgmental stance and skillful filmmaking, this documentary struck just the right chord in telling the story without any of the histrionics that could so easily have accompanied the emotionally-fraught narrative.

  So why didn’t I give this movie a higher rating? The first half was a bit weak, frankly a trifle boring—I fell asleep through some of it—and the narration was poorly scripted. The highlight of the experience? Three of the WWII vets interviewed in the film—two former Kamikaze pilots and one survivor of the sinking of the USS Drexler—came to the Q&A following the screening and showed every evidence of a lovely camaraderie.

• Borderlines – 2 stars

  One word: meh. This shorts program was aggressively mediocre, with me not liking 3 of the 4 selections very much at all. The one I did like, about a North Korean boy who defects to the South in order to pursue his dream of being a rock musician, was very good until about the last 30 seconds, and then it got stupid.

• The Killing of a Chinese Cookie – 4 stars

  This documentary about the history of the fortune cookie was magnificently entertaining and at times flat-out hilarious. Some simply masterful editing and an at-first confusing but ultimately well-executed narrative structure really made this documentary stand out. The tongue-firmly-in-cheek sensibility of the story made for an interesting, informative experience. The only drawback was that they used some unnecessary footage that was, though entertaining, not really relevant to the story, and which made the focus meander a bit.

• Planet B-Boy – 5 stars

  This movie was awesome, just about the perfect documentary: a interesting, little-known subject—B-boying, more commonly known as breakdancing (but don’t call it that; they don’t like it)—portrayed flawlessly. And I mean flawlessly. Director Benson Lee did a wonderful job of selecting and cutting together 102 minutes of his 400+ hours of source footage, constructing a tightly woven narrative around the Battle of the Year, the annual international B-boy competition held in Germany.

  As engaging as Air Guitar Nation and as beautifully put together as Tales of an Osaka Love Thief, this movie is one of the best documentaries I’ve seen, put together with energy, pathos and style. Bravo!

About the rocky start: starting with them sending our tickets to the wrong address, the festival staff just seems to be amateurish and disorganized this year. Their crowd control, never very skillful, has broken down altogether, and though each volunteer is sporting a Secret Service-style headset and walkie-talkie kit, they seem, if it’s possible, to be less informed and more confused than if they weren’t talking to each other at all. Yeesh.

SFIAAFF, or the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival, for short, has quietly been becoming one of the best film festivals of those I regularly attend. This year, happily, looks to be no different.

The festival will run this year between March 13 and 23 here in San Francisco (with different dates in Berkeley and San Jose), and has an interesting lineup again, featuring the latest films from Hou Hsiao-hsien (Café Lumiere) and Nobuhiro Yamashita (of Linda Linda Linda fame). Exciting indeed!

Love for Share – 2 stars
My friends and I have learned something the hard way: avoid triptychs. Never watch a movie with three stories in it. They all suck, or are mediocre at best (cf. Three Needles, Three Times). I’m not talking about movies telling multiple concurrent stories in general, but movies with three stories specifically—two stories is fine (Chungking Express), five stories is fine (Do Over)—are no good. Had we known that this movie had three stories, we wouldn’t have bought tickets. The three stories in this film were only very superficially tied together, and in mostly trivial or nonsensical ways. What’s more, two of the three were dumb. Only the first of the three was any good, and given my inevitable bad luck, I missed the first fifteen minutes of it. Sigh.

This movie was doubly disappointing, having seen it so soon after Do Over, which had a similar M.O., but was executed infinitely better. Not a great way to end the film festival, but overall I had a very good experience: I liked about 3/4 of the movies we saw.

Tomorrow night will be the last night of movies for us, and then SFIAAFF 2007 will, sadly, be over. The latest:

• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – 4 stars
  You know I’m a sucker for animated movies, so I went into this one with relatively high expectations, and the reviews I had skimmed had been uniformly positive. I was not disappointed. This film had some powerhouse talent on the back end, and it showed. Very high production value (some truly stunning backgrounds, e.g.) and a charming, well-told story made for a supremely satisfying moviegoing experience.

  An aside here about trends in Japanese animation I’ve been noticing in the past few years: it seems that hand-drawn cel animation is making a comeback. This may partly be in reaction to the ubiquitous use of CG in 2-D animation in recent years, and its subsequent loss of mystique, but the bigger budget shows and movies I’ve seen recently—Beck, Samurai Champloo and Samurai 7, notably—including this one, are using more of a hand-drawn, studiedly imperfect look in the 2-D sequences. I, for one, mostly approve of this trend; it gives the visuals a certain warmth by removing some of that computer-generated slickness.

• Do Over – 4 stars
  So I don’t really know what happened in this movie, but it was cool. Do Over, director Cheng Yu-Chieh’s debut effort, has an astonishingly high production value for a first film. Cheng is a technical master; every sequence in the film is stunning, every transition and cut and frame assured, smooth, beautiful. Add to that a talented cast and a striking, understated score, and you’ve got a very nearly perfect^* film. It’s very much a case of style over substance, but what style! Just a pleasure to watch. I very much look forward to Cheng’s future efforts.

  ^* I came this close to giving this movie a 5, but I figure there’s nowhere for this guy to go but up, so I’ll leave him some room for improvement.

Kabul Transit – 2 stars

I walked out of the theater with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, but I didn’t know why. It took me a little while, but I think I’ve figured out what I didn’t like about this documentary. Its focus wasn’t tight enough. Instead, it was an almost random pastiche of images from in and around Kabul, a meandering travelogue of sorts with no clear message or goal.

Don’t mistake me: I usually don’t like my documentaries to have “messages”, but giving this particular documentary one would have improved it immeasurably. If the goal was to show life in modern Kabul, I think it would have been much better to have taken a sort of day-in-the-life-of approach with one person as the central figure to give it focus and to give the viewers someone in particular to relate to. Because, in fictional as well as non-fictional filmmaking (the same as in writing), the most powerful tales are those with people at their center, people whom you get to know well throughout the course of the film or novel or whatever.

That is the common factor in all the best documentaries I’ve seen (including Ken Burns’ sprawling epic, Jazz): the focus on people, on telling the tale through the people who lived it. Shake Hands with the Devil focused on Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire during the Rwandan genocide, Air Guitar Nation was as much about C. Diddy and Björn Turöque as it was about the International Air Guitar Championships, and The Great Happiness Space told of Japan’s host club culture by focusing on one club in Osaka, on its owner Issei and his fanatically devoted clients, rather than taking a more impersonal tour of many different clubs.

So while the subject matter was something I was interested in learning more about, the execution was poor and unfocused.