While the cinematic world prepares for the blockbuster extravaganza that is summer movie season, the Inlander's film crew spent much of last week bingeing much smaller silver screen wonders at the annual Seattle International Film Festival. While we only saw a fraction of the fest's hundreds of offerings, here are some of the standouts to watch for in the coming year or so.
DREAMIN' WILD
Donnie and Joe Emerson's journey from Inland Northwest unknowns to indie music royalty isn't your conventional showbiz success story, and Dreamin' Wild isn't your conventional biopic. The movie, shot primarily in Spokane and Fruitland, hits all the dramatic beats you may already know: how the Emersons' dad built his teenage sons a recording studio on their family farm, how Donnie and Joe recorded an album of original songs in 1979, how that record did little but collect dust until it was rediscovered and embraced more than 30 years later. But writer/director Bill Pohlad takes an evocative, impressionistic approach to this material. As he did in his terrific Beach Boys film Love & Mercy, Pohlad slips freely through time, contrasting the starry-eyed optimism of the adolescent Emersons (Noah Jupe and Jack Dylan Grazer) with their more weary adult counterparts (Casey Affleck and Walton Goggins), who wonder if they'll be able to live up to such unexpected recognition. This is a warm, low-key movie about the joys and frustrations of creating art, and it'll make you want to spin that old Emersons LP (also called Dreamin' Wild) as soon as the credits roll. (NW)
LOLA
While the consequences of being able to see into the future has long been a sci-fi staple, it can still lead to some wondrous cinematic adventures. This Irish film centers on two adult sisters in the UK in the late 1930s — one an imaginative dreamer and one a pragmatic scientist — who create a machine named LOLA that can receive television broadcasts from the future. Presented as pseudo-found footage of their black-and-white home movies (though some of the logic of that conceit falls apart), it's a blast at first seeing them discover David Bowie, Bob Dylan, and more. When World War II sets in, they begin using their invention to thwart the Nazis... but that leads to some dire butterfly effect consequences. It's a pretty thrilling, inventive and well-acted ride with deft use of edited archival footage to create a different history for us all. (SS)
L'IMMENSITÀ
Director Emanuele Crialese's first film in a decade is a gentle reminiscence of his experiences growing up as a trans kid in 1970s Italy, and its lived-in dramatic specificity is punctuated by disarming flights of fancy. That stylistic juggling act is in keeping with the film's theme of societal conformity, as its characters attempt to break from the constraints of a patriarchal, deeply Catholic culture. Crialese's fictional avatar is 12-year-old Adri (Luana Giuliani), and he's beginning to question his gender identity while his eccentric mother (Penélope Cruz, unsurprisingly great) indulges in childish games as a means of escaping her bleak domestic life. L'immensità is filled with adolescent longing, sumptuously photographed and designed with pristine period detail, and its bursts of musicality include an impeccable recreation of a TV performance of Adriano Celentano's gibberish song — say it with me now — "Prisencolinensinainciusol." (NW)
CONFESSIONS OF A GOOD SAMARITAN
Documentarian Penny Lane has an elite knack for turning an unusual story into a fun and compelling documentary, as past films like the animated quackery of Nuts! and the devilishly delightful Hail Satan?. Her latest doc turns the camera on herself as she makes the atypical choice to be an altruistic (or Good Samaritan) kidney donor — aka she's willing to give her kidney to a stranger in need. The film takes a deep dive into the history of organ donation, Lane's personal experience, and the concepts of empathy and altruism. It might blow past some of Lane's depressive red flags a bit, but it does wrestle with societal norms with a web journaling sensibility that keeps this matter of life and death light and ultra-accessible. (SS)
LATE BLOOMERS
Do characters need to speak the same language to be the core of a buddy comedy? Late Bloomers says, "No." Karen Gillan (Nebula in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies) stars as Julia, a hapless 28-year-old who breaks her hip when drunkenly trying to peer into her ex's window. Since young folks don't break their hips, she is placed in physical therapy with Antonina (Margaret Sophie Stein), an extremely cranky old Polish woman who speaks no English. After starting at odds, they spark up an unlikely caretaker friendship and help each other face their respective life challenges. Both Gillan and Stein are terrific in this consistently funny reflection on motherhood and finding purpose. (SS)
BLUE JEAN
It's England in the waning years of the Thatcher administration, and the government is intensifying its legislation that would punish the "promotion" of homosexuality. Jean is a high school P.E. teacher who keeps her queerness hidden from her colleagues, lest it cost her the job, but her personal and professional worlds collide when one of her students begins frequenting her favorite gay nightclub. Shot on beautifully grainy 16mm, Blue Jean captures its time and place so vividly that it's hard to believe it's a brand new film, and Rosy McEwen's brilliant central performance lets us peer into Jean's mind as she wrestles with her own identity. It's an often gripping and ultimately hopeful drama, and an impressive first feature from BAFTA-nominated writer/director Georgia Oakley. (NW)
HARVEST MOON
Need an escape from the hectic world? Harvest Moon offers up a gorgeous meditation on fatherhood in the majestic Mongolian countryside. An adult son leaves his city life to return to the remote wilderness where his dying father is a hay farmer. After the old man passes, the son decides to take up the duty of manually finishing the hay harvest and bonds with a nearby precocious young boy who is being raised by his grandparents. While the story itself is fairly simple, the beautiful cinematography will make you long to get off the grid in Mongolia. (SS)
A DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE
It's a known fact of nerdom that the Star Wars Holiday Special, which aired on CBS in 1978, is one of the biggest pop cultural misfires of all-time. How did George Lucas and all the Star Wars stars allow this mess of wordless Wookiee growling, Bea Arthur singing in a cantina bar, unfunny sketches, and even a grandpa Wookiee VR porn sequence to be made? A Disturbance in the Force gleefully tells the story of a time when people felt like variety shows were more of a sure thing than Star Wars. With a fun mix of great archival footage mining and interviews with both the people behind the production (writers, directors, costumer designers) and a fun mix of comedians and superfans telling the story (Weird Al, Seth Green, Kevin Smith, Taran Killam, Paul Scheer), it's a wild ride that goes down smooth even if you've yet to subject yourself to the actual Holiday Special. (SS) ♦
