Well the Seattle International Film Festival is half-way over and I’ve been able to see three movies so far and probably going to see three more in the next week and half. After my first two movies, I was a little dissapointed in my SIFF selection, but tonight’s movie brought it all back together.
Icons Among Us – Jazz Documentary
This documentary focused on the unevolution of jazz over the past 40 or so years. It tried to show the underground scene of “jazz” that’s trying to break away from the stereotypes and the bad rap that jazz gets for being uninspiring and unfresh. And while it seems to be quite redundent and may be a bit too long, it did give me personally a taste of what’s going on in the scene and a list of artists to check out, which was what I was hoping. All in all though, I felt the film was a little too long, and towards the end, it lost its direction. It never seemed to go anywhere either, though some of the interviews were very solid and entertaining.
Egon & Donci – Hungarian Animation
This was I’d call a eastern european version of a primitive WALL-E. The CGI animation is top notch, up there or better than the Shrek and Pixar movie franchises. The movie has little to no dialog; scientist Egon and his walking cat Donci just moan and groan for sounds, with the occasional “DOOOOOOOOOONNNNCIIIII!” (kinda like “WAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”) After an expeditionary ship crash lands near them, Egon is able to finish his space travel project and the pair travel through the solar system. While this may seem like a kid’s movie at first, I really don’t see how any child would understand what’s going on in this movie, let alone the ending, which puts the pieces together and dumps a massive social/economic message at you. Overall, I thought the movie was alright. Almost seemed like everything in the middle was filler and you really only needed to see the beginning and end. Actually, thinking back, there was quite a bit of filler everywhere, with the odd antics of both characters that really didn’t do anything to the movie but was there just for some comedic value. Eh.
Welcome – French Drama
This movie is about a teenager who left his home in Iraq on a quest to find the girl of his dreams in England, who he had met a few summers ago through a soccer teammate friend. It’s a great, sad, and inspiring story of this kid who’s an illegal immigrant in a foreign land, with one goal in mind and he’ll stop at nothing to achieve it. It’s also a story about a swim instructor who has fallen on hard times with the fallout of his marriage gone south, and neighbors that hate him and a mostly lonely life, and how this instructor reaches out to the teenager in his journey. This movie has been the best movie I’ve seen this year so far, though I havent seen alot of movies. It’s a french film, but suprisingly it’s split almost equally in french, english, and what I think is Kurdish.
Next films on the agenda: Zombies of Mass Destruction (ZMD), Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly, Kimjongilia