19. The movie I've been waiting to see since first watching the trailer, Whip It! Whip It is Drew Barrymore's directorial debut. It's such a great "I am Woman Hear Me Roar" film, you should take your daughter, your sister, your cousin, so they can experience the wonder of strong women playing roller derby!! A simple story with a familiar storyline that keeps you interested with plenty of surprises and great performances.
Ellen Page (of Juno fame) plays Bliss, a senior in small town Texas. Her mother is a pageant mom, putting both her daughters in all the pageants around the state. Bliss is more into rebelling against her mother and being her own person. One day, while on a shopping excursion in Austin, Bliss comes across a flyer advertising female roller derby. Bliss goes to check it out, falls in love and immediately signs up and becomes a member of the Hurl Guides, the worst team in the league. The movie has plenty of love and friendship, along with lots of music and lots of heart. A really fun movie.
20. Road, Movie - a celebration of the film industry in India. Road, Movie is a simple film about a directionless man who takes his Uncle's Van on a 6 day cross India trip where he's supposed to drop the van off at the end of his travels. The van has a makeshift movie theatre in back, complete with projector, large screen and large speakers. Along the way our hero picks up a young boy and old man both looking for a fair in the middle of the desert, and together they show films to wandering Gypsy's looking for water in the desert for days on end. The film had fun bits, was a bit boring, but definitely showed me a part of India I've never known.
The director came out and introduced the film along with a LARGE NUMBER of people who worked on the film including the editor, costume designer, 4 producers, director of photographer and 3 stars of the film. The director told us to experience the film in true Indian style by making sure we all leave our cell phone's on and have loud conversations with one another throughout the film....I think most people caught his sarcasm.
Day 9 - AN EXCELLENT day of films and the day my good friends Sandy and Darryl had their BABY BOY Mason Cooper!
21. Max Manus - a Norwegian film about the Resistance in Norway during World War II. It focuses on the legendary freedom fighter, Max Manus. The film was the biggest grossing film in Norway in the past 10 years. And man is it GOOD!
A simple story, a military man loves his homeland and hates the Nazi's. He bands together with some like minded people who work together to blow up huge Naval ships and cause other destruction to thwart their invaders. Its very well acted and has this particularly great scene with Max riding on bicycle shooting 6 or 7 Nazi's coming at him on a truck. Awesome.
22. Mother - a South Korean film that certainly doesn't believe in convention! And that is an AWESOME THING! A mother lives with her less than intelligent son. He's a nice young man but also pretty strange...and he gets very angry if you call him a retard. The mother is very protective of her son and her protection goes into overdrive when he is accused of murder. Because of the slim evidence against her son (a golf ball was found at the scene with his name on it) she decides to investigate the case on her own.
A funny, powerful film with many shocking reveals and lots of foreshadowing that all amount to something. It is near perfection until the bloody ending...it has those multiple endings where everything is wrapped into a pretty little bow, which it didn't need to do!! But in spite of its run on ending still a really good film.
And now for the list, my top films of the festival!
1. Secret in their Eyes - the only film that I'm rating, as I was so stunned, so taken aback by how much it spoke to me and how beautiful it was.
The others were:
- Together
- the Informant
- Max Manus
- Mother
- Backyard
- Invention of Lying
- Whip It
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