Edinburgh International Film Festival

Sleep Dealer, a new movie by Mexican director Alex Rivera, is set in a dystopian future of the United States and Mexico, where water is never free and cheap labor is provided by high tech sweat shops in Tijuana. The workers are “plugged in” to a matrix like machine that lets them control robots remotely all over the United States, performing jobs for low wages and without ever stepping foot into the country. The main character, Memo Cruz, lives outside Tijuana on his family’s dried up farm. Once a flourishing farm with plenty of crops and water, the farm is now dead, due to a company which purchased the river and dammed it to prevent the locals from obtaining free water. The company now charges obscene amounts for drinking water, and Memo’s family is almost bankrupt. Through a tragic series of events, Memo ends up going to Tijuana to work for the sleep dealer factory, where he is plugged in and works exhausting 12 hour shifts. He makes a friend who takes an special interest in his story, and they work together toward revolution.
This film, at first look, is interesting and has a good cast. The bar scenes are funny, and the CGI used isn’t too shabby. However, on second glance, one realizes the film is a rip off of several science fiction series already filmed and produced. The plugs that connect the human to the machine are virtually identical to those seen in the matrix movies. The dystopian elements are the same used in film and literature for more the seventy-five years. The computers remind one of the Tele-screen of George Orwell’s 1984. The film appears to be a complete rip off, in story and vision, except the fact that it is a Mexican cast and a Spanish language film, which is somewhat unusual for the genre. The ending is disappointingly anticlimactic, and doesn’t deliver the promised revolution. I give the film one and a half stars, for lack of originality and sheer boredom.

Let The Right One In, a new Swedish film directed by Tomas Alfredsson, is an amazing new look at the classic vampire movie, using new ideas and old vampire canon together to make an amazing and entertaining film. Set in the early 1980s in a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, the film’s main character is a young boy named Oskar. He is abused at school by bullies, and feels cut off while at home due to his parents separation and the mistrust associated with it. He finds solace in a new friend whom he meets on the jungle gym outside his apartment late one night. Her name is Eli, and while she seems a little strange, the boy sees only their mutual feelings of loneliness and vulnerability. Through a strange series of botched killings in the town, and various other events, the film unfolds into a fascinating series of events that bring the two young children together, probably forever.
The film is a cinematographic masterpiece. Each shot is well planned and executed, and the color choices and combinations set the mood for the entire movie. The acting is spectacular and the story amazing. The only flaw in the movie would be the a few of the CGI elements, especially concerning cats and fire (the two never being mixed, thankfully). The CGI effects seem overly fake and could have been made much better. However, as the two scenes with those elements in them are very short, I can overlook the flaws and give this film an amazing four and a half stars. It is an entertaining and engrossing film that I would like to watch over and over again.

Helen, a film by directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, is an excellent new British film. It is the story of a girl named Helen who helps the police in a reconstruction of the disappearance of a fellow student named Joy. The two, according to the police, look alike and have the same features. However, as the film progresses, we learn that Helen has a life completely different from Joy’s. Joy is popular, plays music in a band, has two loving parents who miss her greatly. Helen, on the other hand, works in a hotel as a maid, doesn’t have many friends, doesn’t have a favorite type of music, and was a foster child living in a home for most of her life. As the film progresses, Helen begins to adopt various aspects of Joy’s life, and talks to her, in soliloquy, as she walks through the woods where Joy disappeared. She meets and possibly falls in love with Joy’s boyfriend, and has dinner with Joy’s parents. She has to confront her own past and reconcile it with Joy’s, as she tries to understand what has led them into such different paths. At the end of the movie, in an extremely poignant scene, Helen finds out her true past, and understands that she can not take on the life of someone else, but instead must live her own life.
Helen is an amazing film. However, its intention is not to entertain, and if the audience expects entertainment, they will go away extremely unhappy. Helen, instead, is an exploration of what makes a person who they are, and how two people who on the surface look alike, can have two totally different lives and personalities. Helen is a tragic figure, seemingly lost by the system that raised her. However, she is the perfect person for a study of this kind, because she is, basically, a blank slate. She doesn’t seem to have a personality. She is without a history, and without opinions. She is, at first glance, ambivalence incarnate. However, as she develops throughout the film, she creates her life for herself. She realizes something is missing, wishes to change it, but in the end adopts her own meaning to life and reconciles her history to the history she wishes to have for herself. She accepts her fate, despite her loathing of it, and continues on with life. It is an extremely existential film. Her final words “I’d like to stop now” echo with meaning, in that she has decided that her life is her own, not someone else’s, and will now begin living it herself. I loved this film, and give it a ranking of four and a half stars.

The Lovers (Les Amants), directed by Louis Malle and starring Jeanne Moreau, is an excellent movie from a French filmmaker.  Shot entirely on location and in the French language, this film broke all the rules in American cinema.  In the mid 1960’s, this film was the focus of a Supreme Court ruling on obscenity after a theatre owner had been jailed for obscenity after showing The Lovers at his establishment.  The Supreme Court overturned all the convictions of the lower courts, and one of the justices made the famous statement “I know obscenity when I see it, and this is not it.” The story centers on a young lady, Jeanne, who is married to the owner of a newspaper.  She is not happy at her country home, so she travels often to Paris, where she visits her best friend from childhood and secretly courts a polo player.  In the end however, she finds she is not happy with her life, and finds, suddenly and without searching, a way to change it.
The film contains a wonderful story of love and the suddenness of how it can change a person’s life.  It is sad that she wasn’t able to find true love before marriage.  However, the fact that she realized her marriage wasn’t making her happy and chose to change it was a good and, I believe, positive event in her life.  She may not be sure of her new lover, but she is aware that she needs change, and that is the catalyst for further change and empowerment.  I give the film four stars, because of good acting, good cinematography, and historical importance.

In the documentary Café de los Maestros, directed by Miguel Kohan, some of the original first generation innovators of the tango come back together in Buenos Aires, the city of their youth, to play a magnificent concert celebrating the tango.  Many artists are interviewed and recorded playing their music, thus preserving it for history.  This is a Spanish language film, with English subtitles.
The music in the documentary is beautifully written and magnificently performed.  However, the documentary itself is very poorly made.  Little is explored deeply, the personal histories left unexplained, and the documentary just doesn’t move from one point to the next with ease.  The music continues for five to ten minutes, uninterrupted, as if one was watching a concert. Then, suddenly and for no reason, spoken word returns to talk about something rather unimportant, and then a new five-minute long section of music begins.  It is a confusing and irritating film to watch.  I give it two and a half stars, simply because it has excellent music.

The film Bananaz by Ceri Levy and featuring the music band Gorillas is a musical documentary that chronicles the lives of some of the band members in their search to bring their bang together for the first time. Some of the primary story lines of the movie are the main men who created the band, how to animate, how to make a movie, and how to flip a cigarette into one’s mouth. The film features the core band as well as a diverse crew of, apparently, less important members of the band, including a black bass player who disappears randomly and without explanation mid film. The animated alter ego’s of the band’s members appear briefly, lasting on screen long enough to cause an epileptic seizure and then spontaneously disappear.

This film is rubbish. Levy apparently worked on the film for over seven years, with the inspiration coming from the lead singer, Damon Albarn. One wonders if the film was over worked during those seven years, or just never really got started on in the first place. The director presents the band members in a manner that seems true to life, but their behavior is so juvenile that even a ten year old should be embarrassed to see this film. After the first ten-minute flatulence joke, I realized that the film is nearly impossible to sit through, and only by the strongest act of will was I able force myself to wait before running at the roll of the credits. I give Bananaz a half star. I mean, they signed their name to it, and that’s got to be worth something, right?

Married Life, a film by Ira Sachs and starring Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper and Patricia Clarkson, is an excitingly slow paced romp through a classic story of love, deception, and betrayal. The film’s opening scene takes place in 1949, and it is apparent from the beginning that the filmmakers want to show this little section of the United States in all its baby booming glory. The movie is resplendent with tuxedos, fedoras, cigarettes and alcohol. Sleek postwar Mercurys and Fords dot the screen.
The characters show none of the shallowness often shown in films set in the period. They are well developed and deep, and one can understand the impetus for their actions. The film feels as if its creators sought to achieve a 1950s period piece on the level of a Shakespearean tragedy and very nearly succeeded. In places it can be very slow, and in others it has unnecessary plot twists and shake ups. The acting and casting for the film is superb, the story is decent, and the imagery and sound excellent. I give Married Life four stars for being a good movie in most respects.

The film Red by Tygrve Allister Diesen is a classic morality tale culminating in a literal battle between good and evil. The film features Brian Cox as Avery Ludlow, an older man getting close to retirement. He and his trusty fourteen-year old dog Red plan on living out their last years together. However, a group of angry teens has different plans when they stumble upon Avery while he and Red are fishing. The teens, one of which is armed with a shotgun, threaten him and takes his wallet. In one parting act of violence the armed teenager shoots Red at point blank range, killing him after a fateful whine. The rest of the movie is a story of Avery’s quest for the truth and justice, not revenge, as he attempts to resolve the conflict with nonviolent means. The families of the teens react with violence and hatred toward him, which culminates in one moment of deception, betrayal, and, in the end, redemption.
Red is a film not particularly well suited for younger audiences, due to its inherit subject matter and violence. However, it is a film that in the end will leave a more mature audience with a sense that a spiritual journey had been completed and shared with all. The color red was well used throughout the film as a scene enhancement, sometimes connected with anger and violence, but more often associated with the more ancient connection between red and the ideas of purity and virtue. Some shaky acting is found in the film, and less than excellent choices for a couple of actors and actresses were made for this film. However, some of the actors, especially Kyle Gallner (Harold) deliver unassailable performances. I would rate this movie as having earned three and a half stars, because of the overly scripted actions of some of the cast, and various other smaller issues throughout.

Mechanical Love, a film by Phie Ambo, takes a brilliant look at the future of robotics and androids, and what role they will play in the lives of regular people. Professor Ishiguro tries out a new gemnoid (an android which looks like a twin of a real person) of himself to see what affect it would have on his family. An elderly woman in a German nursing home is given a small robotic seal named Paro to play with and dote upon. Both groups of people have to deal with the robotics and their replacement of living creatures, and discover for themselves their own definition of a real being.
This film is an interesting look at the relations between human beings and robots, and how those relationships will change in the future. It is heartfelt in its successful attempts to show the need for artificial intelligence and lifelike robotics. However, the documentary layout of the film may be a bit of a turn off for some viewers. It is extremely interesting in subject matter and cinematography, but can be a bit taxing on the attention span at times. Mechanical Love is a good movie for a general audience with general interest in the subject, and an excellent movie for a specific audience with more advanced interest in the field. I give it four stars out of five.