The opening scene of Andrew Neel’s (King Kelly) Goat leaves its audience completely breathless setting the harrowing tone for what’s to follow. Walking back to his car after leaving a frat party early, Brad (Ben Schnetzer) gets approached by a peculiar person asking for a ride. Reluctant at first, he eventually agrees after the stranger insists he’s just going down the road. The situation gets sketchier when the stranger summons another friend to hop in the car as well. Brad reasonably becomes suspicious at this. Then the two strangers admit they didn’t know the guy who threw the party. When they lead him to drive them to a remote field, Brad has no time even to react before the two men beat him to a pulpy mess, take his money, and drive off with his car.

According to his older brother Brett (an unexpectedly remarkable Nick Jonas), none of these horrid events would have transpired if Brad belonged to a fraternity, a brotherhood where his back would always be covered. So he decides to pledge. And the rest of Goat focuses on the bro culture machoism of a fraternity during pledge “Hell Week.” The appeal is obvious at first. Neel shows the glamorous side of partying with frat brothers—an endless supply of booze, girls willing to take off their clothes, and a random appearance by James Franco (who helped produce the film and owns the tiny role). But the fun and games end when the hazing begins.

Based on actual events, Goat is a disturbing look at what people will endure in order to feel accepted. The issue with Goat isn’t watching a bunch of bros force booze upon pledges while also urinating on them as they lay unclothed and tied up, it’s that the film doesn’t know when to stop. Over and over again, pledges are asked to complete asinine tasks, most of which cross the line in human shaming. Exploitation film, perhaps—or torture porn, depending on who you ask—by the end the film leaves its audience as battered as the pledges. Love it or hate it, the film leaves a lasting impression.

Rating:
7/10

It’s not always entirely clear how director David Gordon Green chooses and/or writes the projects he’ll direct. At best we can call him eclectic, at worst erratic. Clearly he doesn’t want to be pegged into any one genre, a noble intention, but it means watching his films is an exercise in expectation. You just never know what you’re going to get. Manglehorn is a nostalgic drama with notes of comedy and plenty of Green’s Malick-y influenced quiet, but mostly it feels like a sleepy character study about a man lost in his uninteresting past.

That man is A.J. Manglehorn, a locksmith in a small Texas town (a favorite setting of Green’s) who lives inside his lonely rituals of work, small talk with the local bank teller (Holly Hunter), eating at a nearby cafeteria, and writing love letters to Clara, the one who got away years ago. His relationship with his workaholic ambitious son (Chris Messina) is tenuous and the closest friend he has in his life is his fluffy white cat, Fanny. As Manglehorn goes about his life, building up the courage to hang out with Dawn the bank teller and explore what it might be like to have a real life (and female) friend, his love letters to Clara lamenting the lost past they once shared are narrated by Pacino with a slight Southern drawl keeping the past as ever-present.

As almost a metaphor for how pointless his love letter sending is, his mailbox has a beehive growing out of it, making checking for daily mail a physical challenge. Everything else happening plot-wise is predictable; since it’s established so heavily that Manglehorn is lost in his nostalgia and couldn’t possibly move forward without first making a disaster of things. And so he manages to further estrange himself from his son, be unfeeling toward Dawn, and be entirely too caught up in his cat’s health. It’s all just so uninteresting.

As if to directly correlate the level of dull content pieced into the script, Green cast the legendary Al Pacino to play the titular character. In fact, Green created the entire idea for the film based on an interaction he had with Pacino years previous where he wanted to tap into Pacino’s particular talent for being an indecisive and enigmatic character. He was right to want to utilize the particular flavor of idiosyncratic that Pacino continues to master as he matures, but leaving out context is the film’s biggest flaw, and it seems a writing issue.

The film’s writer, Paul Logan, was a PA on Green’s film Prince Avalanche. He’s written no other produced features, and the fact that most PAs on film sets have almost no interaction with the director makes it all the more impressive this young man was given the opportunity to write a film for David Gordon Green, especially one with Al Pacino hand-picked for the role. But talk about not taking advantage of a situation. A film that lives in the past, but never really explains the past is a film about nothing. It’s just too hard to tap into Manglehorn’s all-consuming nostalgia without any justification for it. The forward movement of the story is molasses-paced, and while sweet and subdued perhaps, it’s just too inexplicable most of the time. Even Manglehorn’s eventual decision to break off the honeycomb below his mailbox and stuff it inside the box feels less like a moment of triumph and more like the inexplicable actions of a confused old man.

Like all of Green’s other films, there is a distinct color quality to the film. Manglehorn is green-tinged and highly vignetted, adding to the inclusive feel of the film and, perhaps inadvertently, emphasizing the small-scale of its scope. The music of the film is manipulative, attempting to evoke feeling and there is too much reliance on it to add where the writing lacks.

Al Pacino is great as lonely and quirky but has almost a little too much street cred to be believable fully. Holly Hunter is easily likable in almost everything, and she really does come across as the sort of bank teller anyone would want in their life. She’s the only character for which genuine emotion is evoked and more filmmakers should really be utilizing her these days. But neither of these talent behemoths can make up for what is a droll and partially formed script. David Gordon Green can continue to explore and take chances, but like Your Highness and The Sitter, we’re going to have to continue watch as he sometimes fumbles.

When the film held its North American debut at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Manglehorn was one of two movies touted for featuring “the best Al Pacino performance in [x] years.” The other, The Humbling, came into theaters and onto VOD January 23rd without much fanfare. Five months later, Manglehorn is set for its own simultaneous theatrical and on-demand release with a new poster and brand-new trailer.

The latest from prolific director David Gordon Green (George Washington, Pineapple Express), Manglehorn is a dream-like look into the life of key maker A.J. Manglehorn (Pacino). Still heartbroken over a woman whose love he lost years ago, Manglehorn pens lovesick letters while serendipitously solving problems for the various people he meets around town. Co-starring Holly Hunter, Chris Messina and Harmony Korine in a scene-stealing role as a degenerate former Little League player that Manglehorn once coached, Green’s film is full of evocative visuals and a trippy sound mix that blends several scenes together. Manglehorn will get a limited release the same day it appears on VOD, June 19th.

Watch Al Pacino walking around with a cat in the Manglehorn trailer below:

Here’s the Manglehorn poster:

Joe

Director David Gordon Green returns to the indie festival circuit after last year’s Prince Avalanche with a new film starring Nicholas Cage and Tye Sherdian entitled, Joe. Named after one of the main characters (Cage), Joe is about an ex-con who operates a forest clearing business. Set in the hot and humid summer in the Deep South, Joe hires a 15-year-old drifter named Gary (Sherdian) who is eager to work under any circumstances.

If Gary isn’t throwing punches at people that underestimate his strength, he is receiving punches from his abusive piss drunk father. Joe takes it upon himself to take Gary under his wing and begins to form a father figure type bond with the young teenager. What unfolds is brutally violent film that centers on this unlikely friendship that provides a safe haven from his nasty home life.

The biggest problem in Joe is that the film insists on reinforcing what has already been well established. Just about everyone in the film holds a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and if you add up the aspirations of all the characters, it would amount to almost nothing. Strong performances and beautiful scenery found within Joe are undeniable, but the graphic exploitation of its characters takes so much focus that it becomes overwhelmingly exhausting.

RATING: 6.6

Faults

Austin native Riley Stearns hits it out of the park with his first feature-length film Faults, which follows an eccentric cheapskate named Ansel Roth (expertly played by Leland Orser) who is considered an expert deprogrammer of cult members. Willing to do anything for a free breakfast, Ansel agrees to hear out a husband and wife’s plea to deprogram their daughter named Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who has been brainwashed by a cult called Faults. He accepts the job after his previous manager demands a large sum of cash that he is unable to pay back.

Faults starts off as a comedy–a fantastic opening scene involves Ansel trying to use an invalid coupon at a restaurant–then quickly morphs into darker territory when Ansel is hired to kidnap and deprogram Claire. This beyond bizarre comedy features an incredible plot twist near the end that involves Ansel losing own mind while attempting to correct Claire’s. Faults is challenging film in all the right ways and was the most satisfying film that I have seen at SXSW so far.

RATING: 8.4

The claims that David Gordon Green is going back to his older days, where films like George Washington and All The Real Girls had him heralded as America’s Next Great Director, isn’t necessarily true. Sure, Prince Avalanche is Green’s first film in years that resembles his earlier projects, but the influence from his shift to studio pictures is just as prevalent. Even with all of the quiet, contemplative scenes this is still a very broad comedy, one that feels like a perfect middle ground between the two different sides of the director. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

Opening with a title card that talks about a Texas forest fire in the late 80s, the film cuts to gorgeous footage of trees being destroyed by a massive fire before showing two street workers preparing for their day. Alvin (Paul Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch) spend their week walking around painting lines on a road that runs through the forest mentioned at the beginning. The job requires the two of them to be isolated from the outside world, camping out along the road during the week before heading back to town on the weekend.

Lance is the brother of Alvin’s girlfriend, and it’s evident that Alvin only hired him as a favour. Lance is a young playboy with only one thing on his mind, while Alvin prefers solitude. “There’s a difference between being lonely and being alone”, Alvin says at one point, which sums up what Prince Avalanche is about. Lance is constantly looking for a way to not be lonely, while Alvin prefers to be on his own. Both of them end up getting what they wish for, but not in the ways they imagined.

For most of this entirely whelming film, Rudd and Hirsch are usually clashing over their different approaches to life. There are some welcome detours in the narrative, one involving a truck driver (Lance LeGault) who has a never-ending supply of alcohol, and a fantastic scene with a woman (Joyce Payne) going through her destroyed home that nails a lot of what Green was trying to accomplish (and it says something that this scene was never in the script). The same can’t be said for most of Prince Avalanche.

Alvin and Lance feel broadly drawn as characters, making it hard to take either of them seriously. Rudd and Hirsch do fine in their roles, but the material they’re working with is lacking. Green’s focus on nature involves several montages of nature shots which, despite Tim Orr’s great cinematography, feel less evocative and more like padding for time. There’s a heartwarming quality to Prince Avalanche that contrasts with the themes of loneliness and depression, but there isn’t enough dramatic weight behind Alvin and Lance’s situations to make the uplifting quality feel earned.

Nonetheless, there’s plenty to admire. The late Lance LeGault is great in his minor role, and the score by David Wingo with Explosions in the Sky helps support the film’s off-kilter tone. Whether or not it’s an improvement on Either Way, the Icelandic film that Green based his script on, remains to be seen, but it wouldn’t be surprising if both films can easily stand on their own merits. For Green, a director who seemingly fell into a slump after Your Highness and The Sitter, Prince Avalanche certainly seems like a step in the right direction, but it’s too light and forgettable to really make any impact.

Prince Avalanche trailer:

Back in May at the San Francisco International Film Festival, I sat down with director David Gordon Green to talk about his new film, Prince Avalanche, starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch. The film—a character study about two road workers who bicker and banter with each other as they tediously paint road lines in a burned down Texas state park—is a notably weightier comedy than most Rudd vehicles (this isn’t one), striking some beautiful, poignant notes along with the funny dialogue. It also happens to be a remake of an Icelandic film, Either Way by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson (awesome name.)

Green is one of the most versatile directors working today, constantly switching between formats. He does comedies (Pineapple Express), dramas (George Washington), television (Eastbound & Down), and even car commercials. He chatted with me about how the post-rock band Explosions in the Sky influenced the film, reinventing actors, randomly meeting a woman who changed the entire film, the late, great Lance LeGault, and more.

So I hear you love Explosions in the Sky…
Yeah, they’re kind of the reason the movie exists. They’ve done a couple of songs for my movies before. Actually, they just finished a song for my new movie that I mixed in yesterday that sounds awesome. We’d been talking about what we could do together again but in a bigger form; they wanted to score a movie. It had been since Friday Night Lights that they scored a film.

I was at a Super Bowl party a little more than a year ago, and I had this commercial in it (the Super Bowl). It was this Clint Eastwood Chrysler commercial. It was kind of crazy and epic. I was watching it with the Explosions guys and I was talking about how amazing that process was. It feels very epic when you watch it, but it was a very stripped down crew, guys in a van jumping out and filming something. We never really knew what we were going to film that morning, but we’d get up and go film a brickyard in San Francisco or we’d film a train track in New Orleans.

I was talking to them about the process of making that, and they said, “You should take that process and make something in this burned down state park outside of Austin.” After they told me about it, I went hiking up there and I thought, “Yeah, absolutely. I have to make a movie here soon because it’s going to come back to life.” It was burned maybe three months before I was there. I thought, I want to make something here immediately with this run-and-gun process. I woke up one day with a title in my head. It needs to be called Prince Avalanche.

So it was location first, then title?
It was process first, then location, then title. Then, I was doing a commercial up in New York and I was talking to my art director friend. We were just sitting around, having a beer. I said, “Ok. I’ve got the process, location, and title. I have a bunch of scripts lying around, but none of them are going to fit what I’m trying to do.” He said, “You should just remake this Icelandic film that my friend worked on called Either Way.” I said, “Is it good?” and he said, “I don’t know, haven’t seen it.” (laughs)

So, I YouTubed the trailer and I thought it looked really interesting. It was just two guys painting stripes on the road. I tracked down the movie with the intent of how I would remake it. I was thinking, “What’s my version of this?” I started getting really excited because I loved the film. It’s a wonderfully made movie. I was trying to figure out how I could put my fingerprints on it.

What are your fingerprints on the film?
I think the emotional elements of the love stories. I really wanted to bring my honest threads of lost love. Their version is a little more straightforward. It’s a beautiful movie: almost all master shots, very little coverage in it, amazing landscapes. But [my version] felt a little more raw in its cinematography and more explicit in its emotion.

I love how contained the movie feels. The only time we leave the burned park is in the shot where we speed down the road to Paul Rudd’s girl, but that all takes place in his head.
Right, that’s not in their movie. That shot is just a way for me to integrate the frustrations of relationships. There’s always something interesting for me to explore. The balance of masculinity in a relationship, two characters at odds with each other, and yet, they’re saying the same thing. I kind of look at these characters as two versions of myself, both I can relate to an incredible amount. There’s the me that’s trying to be manly and mature, and then there’s the me that just wants to get laid and have fun. Those are the stems, and I just tried to find ownership of the characters in order to do what I thought I could do with [the film], as I’m sure [Sigurðsson] did with the original.

The location is absolutely gorgeous, but really grey. Talk a bit about the splashes of color you use throughout the film: The blue lines of paint on the trees, the mustard Emile plays with.
Yeah, there are those primary colors that explode, like the paint on the road, which you see close-up shots of. There’s the blue overalls, the red car. We really wanted to have an animated world. There’s not a lot of film influence in this, but I could cite a couple of them. Kings of the Road was maybe an influence. With our camerawork I could point to the Darden brothers. The biggest influence was Super Mario Bros. We really wanted it to be this weird, apocalyptic, wasteland landscape, and the Super Mario Bros. took over the reconstruction of the world.

Seriously?
Yeah! Jill Newell was our costume designer, and we were looking at Super Mario Bros. and The Sun, the Darden Brothers movie. It kind of became this odd…

Is that why Paul has the mustache?
Yup. We didn’t want it to be too obvious by making the distinctive Luigi, but we had the red helmets…you know, just trying to be subtle about it.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Emile and Paul had not met before production.
Correct. We all met at my favorite seafood restaurant in Austin, and I just started laughing when they started talking to each other.

So they were funny with each other right away.
Well…funny to me! (laughs)

It was funny to me, too!
The best part is that they’re playing characters that aren’t necessarily what people know them as, as actors. In a lot of ways, Emile is comedic relief in the movie, and he’s never done a comedic performance in his life. Paul takes a lot of the depth and drama of the movie, and he’s mostly known as a comedic actor. I’m really proud of being able to take actors outside their wheelhouse and try something that the world doesn’t necessarily expect of them. Show them something fresh. I tried that with [James] Franco in Pineapple Express. He was mostly known for Flyboys and Annapolis—all these pretty boy movies—and then I said, “Let’s just make him as raw and messed up as possible.” I just did a new movie with Nicholas Cage where I took him in a way that I don’t think he’s ever played. [The role] is all about restraint and subtleties, a really tightly wound performance rather than a big outrageous one. I really like the idea of reinventing an actor, at least in my own way.

Before we run out of time, let’s talk about Lance LeGault. Were there things that he said or did that didn’t make it to the film?
Everything. (laughs) He’s amazing, man. He died right after we shot [the film.] He’s an amazing singer, and he sings one of the songs in my new movie. We’re trying to keep his presence alive. Lance was an extra in a Dodge commercial I did out in Tehachapi, California in the desert. We were filming the new fleet of Dodge vehicles blazing through the desert. I kept hearing this guy talk, and I looked over and thought, “Who is that dude?” He was full of tall tales and piss and vinegar, and I just fell in love with him. I started talking to him and I said, “You’ve got a great voice! You ever do radio?” He said, “Do radio?! Man, I sang with Elvis for over 20 years!” I found one of his records in a record store recently. He’s got albums from the ’70s that are amazing. He was a bad guy in The A-Team for a little bit, bad guy on Magnum, P.I. He’s just a wild card. It was an honor to be in his presence. He’s just so larger-than-life and says the weirdest things.

So the way he acts in the movie is really what he’s like.
Oh yeah. He has the weirdest way of speaking. It’s simultaneously scary and funny. When he smacks the boombox off the log in the movie…

That absolutely killed in the theater.
Yeah, it’s one of the biggest laughs in the movie! It’s all him. He’s just wild.

The interlude with the elderly woman searching for her stuff in her burned down house really gives the movie a beautiful shape.
It’s interesting—it wasn’t in the script. We were location scouting for the scene where Paul pantomimes through a burned down house. My AD Atilla and my producer Craig were looking at these houses and they saw this woman sifting through the ashes in her house. They started talking to her, and she was looking for her pilot’s license in the ashes of her house. They were like, “Hang on…let’s go get the cameras.” (laughs) They came and got me and said, “There’s this lady…I think we should film her. She’s amazing.” We got her permission to bring Paul and a camera over there, and [what’s in the movie] is all her story. I didn’t feed her any lines.

The beautiful contrast of the film is these things that are…like, there’s a background that’s very sad, and yet, there’s humorous things happening in the foreground. In that sense, she’s seeing her loss and her devastation, but there’s something just beautiful and absurd about her looking for a piece of paper in the ashes of her home. It’s all Joyce (Payne), an amazing woman of many accomplishments. She was an artist and had a whole room of ceramics that she had built and things she’d collected from her travels—all of that was gone. She was in a very affected, emotional place, shared it with us, and then we worked her into the truck [at the end] which kind of makes her a supernatural character.

One of the beauties of a low budget movie—so low budget no one knows you’re making it, no one’s looking at you, no one’s asking you why you’re deviating from the script, it’s a three week shoot, nobody’s getting paid—is that when an idea like [including Joyce] comes along, you have to follow your instinct and go chase it. Now I can’t imagine the movie without it. But, we would have taken a different journey if we hadn’t met her.

It’s funny, we showed it at SXSW a couple of months ago, and she didn’t tell any of her family or friends that she was in a movie. She showed up with her friend who said she called her at 1pm and said, “Hey, you want to go to this movie at 4? I’m in it.” Her friend said, “What do you mean you’re in a movie?” They show up, and there’s the red carpet, Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch are there, there are photographers everywhere (laughs).

You can really feel the weight of her scene.
It’s pivotal. It’s hard on a movie like this, because I think it’s a really likable, warm movie. It’s the first film I’ve made where I feel like it’s for everyone. There’s no vulgarity in the movie, there’s no violence, nothing questionable other than maybe some moderate conversation. It’s the first movie I’ve made that I think everyone will enjoy. Obviously, we’ve got the great acting talent of Paul and Emile and Lances charisma, but she brings an honesty to it that gives the movie such a gravity that can sustain on dramatic qualities without needing the big laughs of a comedy. All of a sudden, there’s a truth that she speaks that inherently weaves through the rest of the film. Once she shows up, the film can be as funny as you want or as dramatic as you want—you’re allowed to break all the rules at that point. I kind of attribute the movie to her in a weird way.

Prince Avalanche is in theaters and on iTunes August 9^th.

Inequality for All

Inequality for All’s message—about the threat of the expanding income gap between the middle class and top 1% in the United States—is delivered by an extraordinarily charismatic and inspirational messenger, Robert Reich. Director Jacob Kornbluth couldn’t have found a better, more qualified face for his statistics-driven documentary. Reich has an uncanny gift for making complex, vast, potentially confusing ideas and distilling them down into easily digestible morsels. A former Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, author of 14 books, and current professor at UC Berkeley, Reich lends invaluable experience and unstoppable vigor to what could have been a cold, dismaying film. You can’t help but be inspired by his conviction. Reich makes the film, much like Philippe Petit did for James Marsh’s incredible Man on Wire.

Reich’s ability to inspire is made more impressive by how serious and concerning the film’s subject matter is. The United States’ widening income gap is damaging our economy’s health more than anything else, and we as a country need to rectify this quickly. The first step in doing this is to become knowledgeable about how we got to this point, and Inequality of All is a powerful tool in this education.

The graphics employed to illustrate the dismal state of the economy are stylistic and engaging, aided greatly by Reich’s textured voice. The film’s most resonant graphic—cleverly superimposing the economy’s rollercoaster rises and dips over an image of the Golden Gate Bridge—is powerful and surprisingly emotional. Kornbluth spends a little too much time drawing parallels between Reich’s personal life and the US middle-class, but nevertheless, the documentary ultimately achieves its main goal of making us care.

RATING: 7.9

Prince Avalanche

Set in 1988 Texas one year after a devastating forest fire, David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche follows two road maintenance workers (Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch) as they form a bond through shared loneliness and displacement. Though the plot doesn’t go anywhere particularly interesting, it’s pleasantly minimalist and the characters grow on you nicely. Considerably more artful than his recent studio works (Your Highness, Pineapple Express), Prince Avalanche carries genuine emotional gravity, though there are still plenty of laughs throughout.

Green lets loose creatively in Prince Avalanche, casting Rudd and Hirsch in character types they don’t typically play (Rudd is bitter and stern, Hirsch is the off-beat comic relief). He gives them lots of room to work, fitting in quirky character moments and extended, humorously idiotic dialog about nothing in particular. They fuss and fight over the most mundane of issues (Rudd yells at Hirsch for writing in his vintage comic books), and their squabbles quickly escalate toward the end of the film in a battle over who will be crowned ‘king of the stupids’.

Hirsch is hilarious, playing the role of buffoon without ego—he scrunches his chubby face as he strains to articulate even the simplest thought, and eventually spews out words even dumber than his dopey mug. Rudd doesn’t offer anything particularly noteworthy, though he sets up Hirsch like a pro.

Green uses splashes of primary colors throughout the movie (the duo’s clothes, yellow road paint) that really pop on the muted landscape. Explosions in the Sky provide the film’s understated, ethereal score, which lends itself perfectly to the peaceful setting. A haunting scene involving Rudd interacting with an elderly woman searching the burned remains of her home sticks out like a sore thumb (in a good way) and gives the film a unique shape that distinguishes it even more from Green’s studio work.

RATING: 7.2

As the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival comes to a close, as does our coverage of the festival. This last article contains the award winners of this year’s festival. The top prize award of the Golden Bear went to Child’s Pose from the Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer. See the full list of winners below.

Full list of 2013 Berlin International Film Festival Winners

Golden Bear: “Child’s Pose” by Calin Peter Netzer (Romania)

Silver Bear – The Jury Grand Prize: “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker” by Danis Tanovic (Bosnia and Herzeogvina/France/Slovenia)

Silver Bear – Best Director: David Gordon Green, “Prince Avalanche” (USA)

Silver Bear – Best Actress: Paulina Garcia in “Gloria” (Chile/Spain)

Silver Bear – Best Actor: Nazif Mujic in “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker” (Bosnia and Herzeogvina/France/Slovenia)

Silver Bear – Best Screenplay: “Pardé (Closed Curtain),” by Jafar Panahi (Iran)

Silver Bear – Artistic Contribution: Aziz Zahmbakyjev, cinematographer of “Harmony Lessons” (Kazakhstan / Germany / France)

Alfred Bauer Prize: Denis Côté, “Vic and Flow Saw a Bear” (Canada)

Best First Feature Award: “The Rocket” by Kim Mordaunt (Australia)
Special Mention:  “Layla Fourie” by (Germany/South Africa/France/The Netherlands)
Special Mention: “Promised Land” by Gus Van Sant (U.S.)

Golden Bear for Best Short Film: “Fugue” by Jean-Bernard Marlin (France)

Silver Bear for Best Short Film: “remains quiet” by Stefan Kriekhaus (Germany)

DAAD Short Film Award: “Ashura” by Köken Ergun (Turkey/Germany)

Crystal Bear for the Best Kplus Feature Film: “The Rocket” by Kim Mordaunt (Australia)
Special Mention: “Satellite Boy” by Catriona McKenzie (Australia)

Crystal Bear for the Best Kplus Short Film: “The Amber Amulet” by Matthew Moore (Australia)
Special Mention: “Ezi un lielpilseta” by Ēvalds Lācis (Latvia)

Crystal Bear for the Best 14plus Feature Film: “Baby Blues” by Kasia Rosłaniec (Poland)
Special Mention: “Pluto” by Shin Su-won (Republic of Korea)

Crystal Bear for the Best 14plus Short Film: “Rabbitland” by Ana Nedeljković, Nikola Majdak (Serbia)
Special Mention: “Treffit” by Jenni Toivoniemi (Finland)

The festival is in a state of transition. Much of the international press is beginning to leave the city, and as the weekend nears, they are replaced with more general audience members looking to enjoy the scene. Nearly all of the films have now played at least once, meaning the press has gotten what they came for, and there are now more films in screen circulation for the general public to see. As the press events begin to wane, I find myself making the transition myself; though I plan to stay for the entirety of Berlinale, as there are still several films I want to see. There are no longer any screenings that are press only, and the theaters are taking on a more organic feel with the presence of general movie goers filling the seats around me.

I’m one of those guys that has to have a snack with a movie. I’m not sorry about this–for any of you who cannot stand the popcorn crunchers or mid-show pop-openers. And of course, I never buy from the theater concessions, choosing, rather, to collect my goods from the grocery store on the bottom floor of the neighboring mall. I’ll never forget the time I managed to sneak a whole 16 inch pizza into Rocky Balboa. Europe is ideal for bringing food into theaters because everyone carries a backpack with them where ever they go, so no one questions its presence. During the press screenings I always felt out of place with a Coke and a Mounds bar because I was one of the only one indulging. I’m sorry, but a movie isn’t a movie without snacks–especially ones you sneak in.

Now that I am back with the general audience, I am home again. I don’t have to take three minutes to quietly open my soda–which is exceptionally pressurized after bouncing around in my bag. I can pop that baby open and go to town. Same goes with the candy bar wrapper. After all, going to a movie should be an event. Even if you are hitting three or four screenings a day, this is a time to kick back, have fun, and get lost in a story for a couple of hours. I think if anyone forgets this side of cinema they are really missing out.

Prince Avalanche

I like going into a movie not knowing much about it. Knowing too much sets expectations, and you can fall victim to distracting yourself during a film waiting to see if your predictions prove true or false. For this reason, I will usually follow the recommendations of friends more than I will a review. Sometimes, however, I don’t always manage to steer clear of a review or trailer if my anticipation is too hot to handle. I am, after all, only human.

Because Prince Avalanche was one of the films in which the press was combined with a general audience, I decided it would be a good idea to show up to the theater earlier than usual to ensure a good seat–and by good seat, I mean a good place in line. I showed up to the Berlinale Palast about fifty minutes before showtime, and a thick line was already forming. The group beside me had apparently partied too hard the night before, and weren’t feeling sociable, so I pulled out my phone and decided to entertain myself by reading the reviews of my colleagues. In this process, I stumbled upon a review of Prince Avalanche from Sundance, and decided to break my rule and give it a look.

As usual, it set an expectation. However, I found that the critic in this case was very off base. He declared the film to be a serious role for funny man Paul Rudd, and noted that the pacing was incredibly slow, since much of it is just the two main characters out in the woods. My perception proved otherwise.

Prince Avalanche tells the story of two men, Lance and Alvin. Lance is the little brother of Alvin’s girlfriend, which is the only reason Alvin hired him to help repair the forest roads in a fire scarred region of Texas. The two have nothing in common; Alvin prefers solitude and self-reflection where Lance craves social scenes and partying. The film plays along the usual lines of a buddy film, where the two characters eventually find fulfillment in the character aspects of their foil. It is a bumpy road, but the two reach it ultimately and the ending is very satisfying.

For those Paul Rudd fans out there who have read reviews like I did, and are upset that he will not be providing his usual antics, forget it. Prince Avalanche is hilarious. At times the humor is subtle, but you will find it there none the less. Writer and director David Gordon Green said his script for the 90 minute film was only sixty pages long, meaning he left plenty of room for improvisation of the actors, which is one of Rudd’s strong points. The banter is wonderful between Alvin and Lance, and I couldn’t help but watch the film and, at times, see the characters as children in adult bodies. Not that the humor is childish, it is quite the opposite; rather, the speech pattern is simple and poignant. Rudd commented that he felt the dialog was similar to that of a foreign film, but spoken natively in English. (It should be noted that Prince Avalanche is a remake of an Icelandic film called Either Way.) The film is engaging and keeps a solid pace. With only four characters in the entire film, the actors do a great job to carry the weight for the full 90 minutes.

Apart from the press conference for Prince Avalanche I also made it to a Talent Campus presentation on crafting emotion in screenwriting, in which David Gordon Green was a part of the panel. He gave some interesting introspect on his script for Prince Avalanche, as well as his writing process in general. According to Green, his first task is creating a cohesive story, with a solid arch and a beginning, middle, and end. This first draft story might be bland and hyper-straightforward, but he says that once he has this in place, it gives him freedom to get as weird or offbeat as he wants. Green stated that too often writers will try and write all the quirkiness into the very first draft of a script, and try to make this quirkiness an integral part of the story and characters. He warns against this, as it can create serious challenges in telling the initial story. “Once you have your solid script, your solid story,” he says, “you will never lose it, and that frees you to wander later as far as you want.” Using this process also allows Green to get the actors involved to develop their own characters, which leads to some really unique and entertaining performances.

Greens methods definitely play out in this excellent addition to his work as a fairly prominent director and screenwriter. Green noted that he managed to keep his efforts on this film largely unknown to Hollywood and the press. It was just “friends going out into the woods and making a movie.” This privacy freed Green of expectations and gave him true creative license to do what he wanted, away from external eyes. Prince Avalanche is a fresh, fun comedy that carries a solid message and story at the heart of it. I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and I hope it achieves fairly wide distribution as I think it offers something for everyone.

RATING: 8.6

Director David Gordon Green and lead actor Paul Rudd at a press conference.

COMING UP: As I mentioned, things are beginning to slow down a bit here at the 63rd Berlinale, but there are still plenty of films to see. Later this week is the screening of Dark Blood, the last–and never fully finished–film with River Pheonix. Also, a gold rush American western with a German spin.

Award winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has been confirmed to write the new Steve Job biopic simply named Steve Jobs. Aaron Sorkin won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Social Network last year and will hope to continue his success with the screenplay of former Apple CEO visionary Steve Jobs. The film will be based off the biography by Walter Isaacson. [Playlist]

Which leads into the next topic, former That 70’s Show star Ashton Kutcher will be portraying the late-great Steve Jobs in a completely separate film than the one mentioned above. A few pictures have recently been leaked, check them out and see if you think he can pull it off. He has big shoes to fill. [Filmschool Rejects]

Paul Reubens confirms the new “Pee-Wee Herman” movie will start shooting soon. This new film would be the third installment of the franchise that began with the 1985 cult classic “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” followed by “Big Top Pee-Wee” in 1988. [Coming Soon]

In case you have been living under a rock this week, Cannes Film Festival is going on right now and reviews are starting to pour in from around the web. The staff here at Way Too Indie are working on compiling a list of our most anticipated films for this year’s festival.

The director who brought us Pineapple Express and the TV show Eastbound and Down, David Gordon Green’s latest film will be a remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror classic Suspiria. To lead the film will be Isabella Fuhrman who already has one horror film experience from Orphan. [IFC]

Paste Magazine reports that a Brooklyn based indie band named Here We Go Magic found and picked up John Waters hitchhiking on an Ohio highway. The infamous indie/arthouse director John Waters had been quoted to say that hitchhiking is “a great way to have sex.” It would be shocking if it was any other director, but for Waters it seems about right. [Paste Magazine]

It is no secret that Stanley Kubrick was a bit of a control freak. He was careful about doing interviews, often opting to have full editorial control over his own quotes. This type of control and attention to detail is what made his films masterpieces. Moviefone has an interesting article on how Stanley Kubrick insisted that he took his own Newsweek cover, something that was never done. It’s part of an excellent three article installment on Stanley Kubrick. [Moviefone]