Memo to Milwaukee Film: ARE YOU KIDDING!!

I suppose it could be seen as an odd kind of experiment: if the entire audience of the large central screen in the Oriental Theater were strung out in a single line, how far would it extend? Just before the doors opened at about 7:30 last night there were a thousand people lined up along Farwell to the corner of Ivanhoe Pl., all the way down to the corner of Prospect Ave. and then most of the distance to the next corner, well over halfway around the entire city block.

The crowd, all ticket-holders and therefore assured (presumably) of a seat, remained calm and good-natured about it, but cell phones were buzzing along the entire line. I guess it could also be seen as a test of Milwaukeeans' patience. One does have to wonder how it would have played out on a cold, rainy day.

Is this a measure of the festival's success or simply someone's misjudgement? Is the movie schedule too crowded to allow one audience to exit the theater in time to let a new audience in without waiting outside?

The good news for the festival is that they are selling a lot of tickets and filling the theater. The festival has endured a couple rocky years and it's great to see the enthusiasm. In order to maintain this momentum, festival organizers will have to consider how to prevent an embarrassing repeat of this situation. The good news for me was that I got in to see the movie this time (see yesterday's post.)

And it was definitely worth waiting for (in the pleasant conditions and with the cooperative crowd.) A Funny Kind of Story takes us inside a psych ward - and inside the head of Craig, the depressive main character who can't quite commit to following through with his suicidal inclinations. Vaguely reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this is a more restrained, subtle, and introspective story. It is clever, funny, and thoughtful. Although it's been a long time since I was an adolescent myself, I could easily identify with Craig's internal confusion and tribulations. After convincing the ER doctor to admit him to the psych ward, Craig quickly decides that he's in over his head and the audience, too, is subjected to the relativity of mental distress. Craig seems so normal. (I'm crazier than him!) How many kids grow up today driven by familial and societal pressures to this malaise, this vague unease and incipient anxiety? How many of us, even as adults, need to be medicated to withstand a world full of ever-increasing pressures--to succeed, to consume, to raise healthy children, to see this show, to write about that, to do the right thing?

Again, to see more about the Milwaukee Film Festival, go to Milwaukee Film.

The Kids are Alright and the Milwaukee Film Festival is even better!

At least if you go by the size of the audience it is. I guess it’s a good problem to have, though I’m not on the inside of Milwaukee Film and know little about the logistics of scheduling and less about their bottom line. What I do know is that lots of people went to the Oriental Theater Friday evening to see the festival offerings and many could not get in to see what they came for. Lynn and I went there to see Baraboo only to find ourselves at the tail end of a long rush line of people hoping that those who had the foresight to buy advance tickets wouldn’t show up to claim their seats.

Our hectic lives make it difficult to plan ahead and in the many previous years of the festival we had never been shut out of a movie before. I hope this means success for the festival. Perhaps it means they needed to book a larger venue and if they had they’d have sold more tickets.

We ended up skipping the long, futile line and seeing the one non-festival moving left playing at the Oriental, The Kids are Alright. More evidence that someone hadn’t planned the Oriental’s screening schedule with sufficient prescience came as we entered and found ourselves among eight or ten people enjoying the pre-movie organ music as it echoed in the huge, ornate, empty theater. We also discovered that this movie deserved a larger audience!

On one level, The Kids are Alright is a pretty standard comedy about two parents trying to raise two teenagers. The plot revolves around the kids’ secret decision to locate the man who had donated sperm to their mothers eighteen and fifteen years ago respectively. The story moves along a fairly predictable trajectory that includes a clandestine meeting, discovery, recriminations, jealousy, sexual shenanigans, guilt, etc. There are a couple twists I won’t reveal. A relationship-driven story like this depends upon the actors’ abilities to create believable characters and the entire ensemble is seamless. There’s the uptight, over-involved breadwinning parent, the insecure, lassez-faire stay-at-home parent, the introverted, overachieving high school graduate ambivalent about leaving the nest, and the emotionally withdrawn star athlete. Then there’s the organic food-growing, motorcycle-riding, happy-go-lucky sperm donor who drives a wedge into the familial mix with iconoclastic charm. I write this as if they’re all stereotypes, but they don’t come across that way because of the exceptional acting and honest depiction of family interactions. Annette Benning’s performance as the overwrought, overprotective doctor is especially engaging.

The thing that separates The Kids are Alright from similar stories is the fact that it is all happening to a family with two lesbian parents, played with intelligence, compassion, and gritty realism by Benning and Julianne Moore. But what is most remarkable, I think, is how completely matter-of-fact this is. How refreshing to see a story of such unself-conscious normality! Let’s hope life in the U.S. can imitate art because the kids are alright.

If you want to read more reviews of this highly rated film, go to Rottentomatoes.

To learn more about the Milwaukee Film Festival, go to Milwaukee Film.

Feel the chill; see the film: Winter's Bone is brilliant.

If you think your life is hard—and who doesn’t once in a while—here’s an antidote: see Winter’s Bone, a dark tale set in the Ozark backwoods of Missouri. Briefly, the story centers on 17-year-old Ree Dolly who has to take care of two younger siblings and a mother who has been traumatized past a breaking point we are left to guess at. Ree’s father, Jessup, who makes his living cooking meth, was arrested and released on a bond. The story begins as we learn that if Jessup doesn’t appear in court, the family will lose their house. Most of the movie concerns Ree’s search for her father.

Most of us go to the movies to be entertained and, if they’re any good, most movies deliver entertainment in some measure. I’m no different usually. I saw Inception last weekend and it was entertaining. But I’m not blogging about that. Winter’s Bone is not a common movie. It doesn’t feel like a movie at all; it looks and feels too real to be fiction. Critics have even coined a new genre to describe it: “country-noir.” It’s an apt description.

The landscape we experience—“seeing” is too impersonal a word—in this film seems as foreign as the dark side of the moon. Every scene, no matter how ordinary the action, is imbued with impending violence. The acting is so realistic that it doesn’t seem like acting. Even minor characters are spot-on and, with the possible exception of the Sherriff, none come across as two dimensional. Ree and her uncle, Teardrop, are exceptional characters and complex people. The actual violence that does happen, as opposed to the constant potential for it, is kept off camera but the tension is, if anything, heightened by this.

This is a brilliant film. Don’t take my word for it. Google other reviews and check them out. It received the Grand Jury prize at the Sundance film festival. It’s playing at the Oriental Theater in Milwaukee. (Of course!)

Watch the trailer: Winter’s Bone.