I Touched All Your Stuff (2014) First Look Festival 2015

Haunting and unbelievable story of Chris Kirk a young man from Seattle who goes to Columbia who ends up mixed up with a beautiful Japanese Colombian girl and in jail for drug trafficking.

If you like mysteries and wild stories this is a film for you. Trust me on this you want to see this wild and crazy film which is just one incredible story. It begins with Pablo Escobar's hippopotamuses and then goes from there as Kirk takes a trip to Columbia and has his life goes sideways. However things are not quite what they seem and... well that would be telling.

I discovered this film because good friend Joe Bendel  sent me an email saying that there was a film on Festival Scope I needed to see.  It was wild and crazy and if I watched it soon I could link it to the First Look Festival. Intrigued I put it into the que and waited for the right time to sit down and watch it.

Wow.

I don't know what to say. This is a story that just grabs you and pulls you along. I don't know what I can say without spoiling the surprise and the wonderful sense of "where is this going" that the film creates.  Probably the best thingI can say is that this is one of the finds of the year. Its a must see film that, assuming there is justice, will get picked up and and big US release.

This is one hell of a ride and then some.

I Touched all Your Stuff plays Saturday at The Museum of the Moving Images First Look Festival. For tickets and more information go the film's festival page.

I for Iran (2014) First Look Festival 2015

I FOR IRAN is running as part of the Museum of the Moving Images' First Look Festival on Sunday and is worth a look.

The film begins as director Sanaz Azari starts  lessons to learn Persian. Her mother left Iran and moved to Belgium and she is trying to reconnect with her mother tongue.  Thanks to the use of a post revolutionary text book, the lessons begin to get a parallel discussion of the nature of freedom and revolution in a post revolutionary society.

The  idea behind the film is incredibly simple and in a weird way the film is almost static  with the teacher sitting or standing before us talking about the Persian language or politics. Intercut with the sequences of the teacher are shot from inside the text book which take on different connotations as the discussion goes on. While its almost static, the film is never dull or boring simply because the discussion of everything is so interesting.

Think of it as sitting in on a discussion between two highly intelligent people talking about extremely interesting things and you'll have a great time.

The  film screens Saturday afternoon at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. It's playing with INTERNATIONAL TOURISM about tourism to North Korea and LIVEPAN about ironing. For tickets and more information go to the film's festival webpage.

Hard To Be A God (2013) First Look Festival 2015

In name only science fiction film from Aleksei German that was ten years in the making and was finished by his son after he passed away. HARD TO BE A GOD is based on a novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky who also wrote the novel that Tarkovsky's STALKER is based on and it's even more obtuse.

The film follows what happens to one scientist after he and 30 of his colleagues are sent to the planet  Arkanar  for study. The planet was chosen simply because it was easier to get to than some of the other choices. Arkanar is a world roughly 800 years behind our own, but its anything like the Renaissance ever happened and barbarism and anti-intellectualism won the day. We watch as one of the earth scientists tries to save the intellectuals who are hunted, nudge the culture forward and not kill anyone in the process.

Shot in black and white and made to look like the worst medieval town imaginable the film has an almost tactile feel. You can almost feel the poo, pee , mud, snot and filth of the planet's everyday existence.This is a very dirty place. I suspect that Terry Gilliam is jealous since he clearly has up the ante of JABBERWOCKY.

While the film looks and feels great, I don't know if the film adds up to much. More a rambling series of seemingly random events rather than a straight narrative the film bobs and weaves and dances around it's themes and points for the better part of three hours. If you don't click with it all, and if you don't have a good deal of patience you're going to get board really fast. This isn't the random fractured story lines of say Tarkovsky's ANDRE RUBLEV, this is a seemingly random bunch of bits that slowly begin to tie itself together,

I was just about done about an hour into the film. I kind of knew what was what and really wondered why the hell the film was going to ramble on for two more hours. I know some people have loved this film, but personally its too little meat wrapped up in too much bread.

If you want to see a sort of film that kind of is about something and you'll be able to read a great deal into give it a go, for me, there are any number of better shorter science fiction and non science fiction riffs on the same themes.

The film plays at the Museum of the Moving Image tomorrow Sunday at 730. for tickets and more information go to the films festival web page.