Cinematical

Early this afternoon, Tribeca and ESPN answered my prayers by announcing a multi-year collaboration, the result of which is The Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival, a "showcase for independent sports films," debuting at Tribeca in 2007. Woo hoo, sports and movies! At the same time! Could anything be better? I think not. Though no specific content details are yet available, the project will feature premieres of sports films (both narrative and documentary), online content, and a series of "community events" aimed at the huddled masses of film nerds who also dig sports.

Based on the sports content at last year's festival -- including Once in a Lifetime (aka hands-down Martha's favorite documentary of the year) and Freedom's Fury, a fascinating Cold War water polo (!) doc -- I have a lot of hope for this project. It's a great opportunity for those making sports films to be the focus at a festival for once, and hopefully will bring more quality to Tribeca as a whole. After all, it's not as if the sports films get a pass -- they have to be submitted just like everything else, and will be judged by the same standards. As long as there isn't a sports quota, the quality should be reasonably high. Fingers crossed.

The Aura, the second feature from Argentine director Fabián Bielinsky, is so strange and lovely that his recent death at the young age of 47 seems even more tragic for all it has denied the world of cinema. Bielinsky's final work is a film that relishes distance and isolation, glorying in the experiences of a man who lives apart from the world around him. Like its main character, The Aura exists in a sort of suspended animation: It offers no backstory, and there is no future suggested by its ending. It simply exists, a work of such power and grace that its needs no external support.

The film centers on an unnamed taxidermist (the note-perfect Ricardo Darín) who, like the film, exists in a vacuum. We know he is epileptic because the movie opens with him on the ground, after a seizure. He rarely acknowledges his condition, but it dominates his life and is a source of both frustration and perverse joy. We know he has a wife because she leaves him, but we see her only once, fleetingly, though a pebbled glass window. And we have no idea why she left, or what their relationship was like. (At one point, the taxidermist makes a general attack on abusive husbands and, though at the time his words seem aimed at another, there's a such an odd, personal depth to his loathing that one wonders -- fleetingly, but the question is there -- if, perhaps, we've just been told exactly why his wife left.) Apart from his wife, the taxidermist seems to know a single other person: A big, loud colleague of whom he's clearly not very fond. They are forced into a certain camaraderie because of their shared profession, but it's an obvious effort for the taxidermist to even engage in basic social niceties. When his colleague asks how he's been, and what he brought to the museum at which they meet, the taxidermist answers him, and then falls silent. It's not until several seconds later that he remembers something is expected of him, and offers an awkward "And you?"

Steve Anderson's feature-length documentary Fuck sports an impressive, wildly diverse cast: Thanks to the magic of editing, Pat Boone appears alongside Chuck D and Billy Connolly, and Sam Donaldson, Janeane Garofalo, Bill Maher, Miss Manners and Ron Jeremy -- among copious others -- also make appearances. All are on hand, presumably, because they speak from a position of authority on the film's title word. In addition to the actors, newsmen, comics, porn stars and politics, the film also features a handful of "cunning linguists," who provide periodic infusions of what passes for academic commentary. Token academics aside, however, the film is little more than a flimsy excuse -- an entertaining excuse, mind you, but an excuse nevertheless -- to shout "FUCK!" in a crowded movie theater, and to mock the conservatives Anderson knows won't see his movie.

Less focused than its title and press would have us believe, Fuck is a superficial examination of obscenity in America. It revolves around the word in question, but branches out generously into subjects like FCC regulation, the impact of Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, and the horror of Janet Jackson's dreaded right boob. Most of the movie is made up of sound-bite friendly talking heads interviews which, because they take place against a black background, can create the weak illusion that all the subjects are in the same room. Thus, Anderson can cleverly edit his interviews with Miss Manners and Ron Jeremy into one another, vaguely suggesting at one point that she's been driven from the room by the power of his dirty words. (Nothing of the sort happened, of course, but it's always fun to mock Miss Manners, right? And oh, that naughty Ron Jeremy!)

Note: This review originally ran during the Tribeca Film Festival. It's being rerun now, because the film is opening this weekend. - ed.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Miami grew from a sleepy, retirement community into the glittering, money-filled metropolis it is today. During that time, the city also became cocaine center of the US, as well as the country's murder capital; in 1981, things were so bad that a Time Magazine cover story dubbed Miami "Paradise Lost," and suggested that Americans traveling there might be putting their lives in danger. After meeting Jon Roberts, a former dealer who lived through Miami's heyday (and did time for his involvement), the team of director Billy Corben and producer Alfred Spellman decided to make a movie about those days, and Cocaine Cowboys is the result.

Clocking in at just under two hours, Corben and Spellman's film has a very strange tone. Ostensibly a serious exploration of how cocaine affected Miami during the 1970s and 1980s, the movie devotes an awful lot of time to watching Roberts crow about his accomplishments and brag about his money. Also prominently featured with Roberts is Mickey Munday, a less flashy, fellow ex-con whose involvement in the cocaine trade was in transportation rather than distribution. The two men carefully lay out the structure though which cocaine was produced, brought into the US and sold, with the filmmakers eating up every word. Later, when the movie shifts to the financial impact the drug had on Miami -- despite the downturn the rest of the country was experiencing, the cash being spent by those involved in the cocaine trade made the city virtually recession-proof -- the two men again dominate the screen, detailing their spending habits, and telling gleeful anecdotes about being on first-name terms with the guy at the Mercedes dealership, and owning dozens of racehorses.

December, 1560. Gonzalo Pizarro leads his band of explorers-cum-treasure-hunters-cum-soldiers out of the Peruvian Andes. Weighed down by the out of place trappings of modern warfare and ludicrous luxury items, the tiny band is dwarfed by its surroundings and chillingly out of place. On the fringes of the group stands a man wearing an incongruous bright pink shirt, a battered helmet, and a strange set of armor that seems to consist entirely of studded leather straps. When he moves, he leans backwards and walks stiffly, his body clearly ravaged by a difficult, violent life. Mostly, though, he watches, his enormous green eyes taking in the fear, malleability and desperation around him, while his impossibly broad, feminine lips embrace their permanent sneer. Like he does, we knew immediately that his time will come.

This man is Don Lope de Aguirre, the title character of what is arguably Werner Herzog's greatest film. Played by the inimitable Klaus Kinski, Aguirre dominates the film in every way, effortlessly manipulating the men around him by quietly turning his own ambitions into theirs. Despite Kinski's wild eyes and the character's eventual eruption, there's a surprising subtlety and intelligence to Aguirre, who grows in complexity with each viewing. Though at first he appears to be nothing but a terrifying, ambitious madman (the film's title, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, comes from Aguirre's own description of himself), repeated viewings reveal much more about the character, and shed further light on his companions.

As the cynics no doubt expected, there are a lot of problem with The Guardian. So, let's address those right up front. First, at nearly 140 minutes, it's way too long, a flaw made even more galling by the fact that the movie blows by a perfect, melancholy close about 20 minutes from its ultimate ending. Second, most of the effects are awful. Since at this point CGI technology remains unable to convincingly portray mass, giant open-ocean waves are not terrifying, but distractingly awkward. Third, the movie is lousy with cliches. From the rookie with a troubled past who rises to greatness to the grizzled veteran with problems of his own who gives the kid a hard time to force him to grow, we've seen all these characters before and we know them very, very well. Apart from the movie's Coast Guard setting, there's very little original to be found inside it. Got all that? Good. Because despite these obvious, sometimes major flaws, The Guardian is a winning, well-made film, the quality and pace of which come as a great relief in the sea of violent, cynical, explosion-laden nonsense that big studios generally sell.

The Guardian's troubled youngster is Jake Fischer, furiously played by Ashton Kutcher. As you might expect, the details of his past are not revealed until late in the film, but the questions are there from the outset: A highly recruited swimmer when he left high school, Fischer refused every prestigious scholarship offer and disappeared, only to surface at a Coast Guard training facility. Not lacking in confidence, Fischer nevertheless shrugs off questions about his past, preferring to focus on proving himself in this new world, and living up to the impossibly high standards set by Master Chief Ben Randall (Kevin Costner), the man tasked with turning the (vaguely diverse, appropriately motley) group of enlistees into elite rescue swimmers.

Being both far too old and nowhere near hip enough to do things like attending midnight screenings and go to cool parties, I arrived home from Toronto last night in much better physical shape than my hipper, younger (at heart) colleagues. Mentally, though, I'm pretty drained -- clearly I'm soft in more ways than one. I did, however, have a great time at the festival -- despite the daily grind of screenings, the little thrill of WAITING IN LINES to see obscure films from Eastern Europe never wore off. I mean, who are these people? Not only do they get excited about the debut feature from some Romanian guy no one has heard of, but they actually take time off from work, buy passes, and see four and five movies a day, aided by intricate, color-coded schedules that let them know what each friend is seeing at every minute. I can't tell you how many women in their 60s I saw taking sandwiches out of their purses and eating in line, because those were their only free minutes for the next 12 hours -- if I'm doing that when I'm 65, my grandkids damn well better realize how kickass their grandma is.

Despite persistent, jaded mutterings that TIFF 2006 wasn't as good as the festival has been in the past, I was really impressed by the quality of the slate, at least as far as it was reflected in the 20-something films I saw. As the designated viewer of foreign movies no one has ever heard of, I was privileged to see some amazing films -- most of which, sadly, are highly unlikely to ever be released on these shores (What distributor is going to buy the rights to a movie about a talk show in Romania?). In addition, though, I also saw a handful of big(ish)-name releases, only one of which managed to meet and surpass my (obviously too high) expectations. Anyway, what follows is a loose, how-I-feel-today list of my five favorite films of the festival -- for the more obscure ones, just hope the programmers of your local festivals see fit to bring them to town. Otherwise, a region-free DVD player is probably your only hope.

In Nanni Moretti's eagerly awaited The Caiman, there are all of four different Silvio Berlusconis. Though three of them are fictional and therefore subject to the whims and manipulations of Moretti's screenplay, the most frightening of the group is easily the real Berlusconi, seen in newsreel footage so completely outrageous that one can only chuckle in dismay. The media mogul/former Prime Minister is an obvious, easy target for any filmmaker as proficient and political as Moretti, so it's disappointing that his film is less a scathing indict of the Berlusconi regime than a resuscitation of his well-known violations and offenses.

The three fictional Berlusconis are all actors playing the starring role in a movie being made within Moretti's film, also entitled The Caiman ("Il Caimano" is a common media nickname for the former Prime Minister), and also planned as a crushing blow on its target. Schlock horror producer Bruno Bonomo (Silvio Orlando), who hasn't made a movie in a decade, falls into the film entirely by accident, and by default it becomes his comeback feature. The screenplay was written by Theresa (Jasmine Trinca) and, despite major concerns on the part of the only producer who doesn't run from the project because of its political nature, she's hired to make her directorial debut with the film. There are, needless to say, endless problems with the production, and in the end there's only enough money to shoot a single day in the life of the Caiman.

Despite the slot reserved for it in my personal (and beloved) "depressing Eastern European films" file, 12:08 East to Bucharest was in fact the funniest movie I saw in Toronto. The first feature from Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu, it contains moments so hilarious they not only hurt when you experience them for the first time, but also keep the theater alive with laughter for the few minutes that follow, as everyone around you replays the scenes in their heads and finds themselves captivated again by the memories. At times, the laughter was so loud and so long that I was glad the film was in Romanian and had subtitles, because the dialogue was entirely inaudible.

Set in a small town outside of Bucharest on December 22, 2005 -- the 16th anniversary of the fall of Ceausescu -- the movie documents the efforts of Jderescu (Teodor Corban), a textile engineer/TV station owner, to assemble a panel for a live TV show on the revolution, and then to keep that show in order, once it goes on-air. When he's let down by the "prestigious" panel he'd originally lined up, Jderescu, out of desperation, digs up two last-minute guests: Manescu (Ion Sapdaru), a weary college professor who claims to have spear-headed the town's "revolution" in 1989, and Old Man Piscoci (Mircea Andreescu) who gets the call, it appears, mostly because he's old, and Jderescu happens to see a picture of him the morning of the show.

Late in Time, a character suddenly looks into the camera wearing a life-sized mask of her own face, complete with eye shadow and lipstick. Had the movie worked to that point, the moment would have been chilling, reducing the audience to a stunned silence. As it is, however, the scene is greeted by shouts of incredulous laughter; for viewers like myself, it's the point at which we realize there's no redemption ahead, and we're never going to make the emotional connection director Kim Ki-duk seems certain he's created.

Based on a fascinating topic -- the allure of plastic surgery, not for enhancement but for renewal -- Time is a story loaded with potential. As the film opens, Seh-hee (Park Ji-Yeon) and Ji-woo (Ha Jung-woo) have a terrible fight that stems from him having the temerity to lay his eyes on another woman. Later in bed, Seh-hee apologizes over and over for always having the "same boring face," and begs him to imagine one of the women they fought over as they make love. The next day, she's gone, ending a two-year relationship without a word.