Winter’s Bone is a reasonably well-made drama that falls short of being exceptional. It is a safe movie that follows a tried and tested path, never pushing the plot or characters to the potential they promise. It tries to be a realistic, bleak and emotional story from Midwest US, but instead plays out like a fairly dark bedtime story, happy ending included.

20-yr old Jennifer Lawrence stars as 17-yr old Ree Dolly looking for her missing father. Her father, a criminal who cooked drugs, put up their house for bail, but is now missing. If he does not turn up for his court-hearing in the next few days, Dolly loses her house. With two younger siblings and an ailing mother to look after, Dolly must find him, dead or alive.

While director Debra Grank makes a satisfactory movie out of this plot, it plays safe and therefore fails at becoming memorable. Lawrence’s performance is adequate, but again, not exceptional. The cold detachment she projects towards her father – we learn she has no reason to hate him – ensures we do not sympathize with her. Dolly goes back and forth between her home and those of others she knows to inquire about her father, but never really ventures out, never goes the length she possibly could, considering the dire alternate she and her family face. In effect, there is no sense of desperation in her need to find her father. She faces little danger, apart from once instance when she is badly beaten up. The better-off neighbors feed her horse and give them enough to eat. Everyone who starts out as a menace eventually turns around to assist her. The resolution to the film is equally underwhelming – help comes unexpectedly from all corners.

Winter’s Bone is the typical clichéd American independent film. Much like in mainstream Hollywood, the bulk of American independent film creativity seems to have mistaken a set of rules for creativity. While not a bad movie in any sense, Winter’s Bone becomes a by-the-books forgettable film because of the company it is in. In fact, so much so that by the time the movie ends, the title of the movie makes little sense, and there is no curiosity to find out why either.

The Messenger

The Messenger treads a noteworthy path. It is a slice-of-life film, focusing on essentially three characters in everyday America, yet is about a lot more than it shows. It brings a global conflict to our doorstep and down to a personal level. Although it is about grief, the movie is not heavy-laden with the emotion itself. This becomes the movie’s biggest accomplishment.

Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) has three months left in active duty after mostly recovering from an injury on-field in Iraq. To complete service, he is assigned to the army’s Casualty Notification Service under seasoned notifier Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson). Stone follows the rule-book: arrive at the next-of-kin’s as soon as news of the soldier’s death is received; inform the family in a rehearsed precise and concise manner; leave. No compassion or explanation is to be offered. While Montgomery initially follows the rule book, his experiences with heartbroken parents and spouses eventually move him to be benevolent. He eventually befriends a grieving widow, taking it to the point of a budding romantic relationship.

The characters of Montgomery and Stone are interestingly different. While Montgomery has seen combat up-close and is even a decorated war-hero, Stone never went to the war zone. Yet, it is Stone who takes on an apathetic mannerism in his somber work, while Montgomery sees a need for compassion. What they do share is loneliness. The Messenger looks at these two people intimately, preferring to explore the sorrow and solitude of these two characters instead of the grieving relatives that they bring tragic news to. Montgomery’s pre-service girlfriend (Jena Malone) did not wait for him, and is getting married. She does not want Montgomery to attend. Stone is a recovering alcoholic. So while Montgomery finds comfort in the company of an army widow (Samantha Morton), Stone finds comfort in the company his new aide. In one powerful scene, Montgomery narrates to Stone the incident that got him his medal. Afterward when left alone in the room, Stone breaks down crying in what becomes the crescendo of a wonderful and heartfelt performance by Harrelson. Samantha Morton’s widow character goes through her period of doubt and uncertainty, unsure of the possibility of a relationship with Montgomery. Ben Foster, in a restrained seething performance himself portrays Montgomery as a suffering hero. By concentrating on such intimate characters, director Moverman enlightens the plight of the veiled victims of war — the survivors, soldiers and civilians alike.

Do not look for melodramatic exposition here, there is none. The Messenger is a war movie that does not show us a war, or its horrors. It instead shows the perceptive effect of death and loss on the loved ones, the detachment that awaits returning soldiers and the sense of worthlessness in soldiers who did not fight. It brings the futility of war to its endpoint.

Dubai International Film Festival 2009

WearetheMovies.com has been diligently covering the festival since last year (our writers are pretty comprehensive and brutal; see links on the right), and this year we will once again jump into the fray, all guns blazing. Dubai is a city we love and we love it even more during the film festival. (Wait, I think I hear Bloomberg and Financial Times nerds crying foul, screaming “standstill” and “meltdown” — screw ‘em, what do philistines know about art.) The DIFF website has just unveiled the entire roster of films, schedule and price details. The information is a bit dense there, so here is a snapshot summary:

Films
The festival films have been split up into 16 programmes. You can navigate the selections by these categories, or become a film militant and scroll through each page, film by film (if you do this,  you will earn our greatest respect). I hand counted 168 films films in there, which is kinda insane and awesome. Ready? Now click these:
A Celebration of Indian Cinema (3 films)
Arab-French Rendez-Vous (5 films)
Arabian Nights (14 films)
Cinema for Children (7 films)
Cinema of Asia-Africa (11 films)
Cinema of the World (26 films)
Gulf Voices (10 films)
In Focus: France (6 films)
Lebanese Night (4 films)
Lifetime Achievement (4 films)
Muhr Arabic Documentary (14 films)
Muhr Arabic Feature (10 films)
Muhr Arabic Short (15 films)
Muhr AsiaAfrica Documentary (12 films)
Muhr AsiaAfrica Feature (15 films)
Muhr AsiaAfrica Short (12 films)

Ticket Prices
Regular tickets are AED 25 ($6.80), but if you’re a Student then it is only AED 10 ($2.70) which is nice of them. Tickets for the Red Carpet Gala Screenings, if you’re into that sort of thing, are AED 80 — only requirement is that they ask you wear “formal or national dress — no jeans.” Else they might kick you out, or worst… actually let you in where snobs in black ties and gowns will really make you feel at home. If you buy tickets in bulk (which we always recommend), then there are special discounted packages. Do the math yourself: let your brain and wallet pick the right deal here.

Box Office
They have counters at the Madinat Jumeriah, Mall of the Emirates and Dubai Media City. Check out this page for the operation hours and contact numbers. Hopefully, the young turks working the phones have a clue.

And you’re done.

(P.S. Need recommendations on what to see or avoid? We have something in the works. Meanwhile, read the early rants and raves from our feisty members on the WM Forum.)

Ramin Bahrani is interested in not only people but how people live. This young Iranian-American director has professed a great love for the Italian Neorealist movement, particularly the films of Vittorio De Sica. The influence is pervasive in Chop Shop, Bahrani’s new film about a brother and sister who live and work in an impoverished part of Queens, New York. The boy’s real name is Alejandro Polanco and his sister in the film is played Isamar Gonzales — both of them get to keep their first names for their characters. Ale and Isamar are non-professional actors, and by allowing them to keep their real names it seems Bahrani helped them overcome the artifice of the kind of screen-acting so endemic to the ‘serious indie film.’

Chop Shop is an intimate story about a brother and sister duo barely surviving on the margins of a neighborhood that is far removed from middleclass America.  The film begins with Ale doing random jobs, but he eventually secures a job at the eponymous chop shop — his surly yet sympathetic owner allows him to live upstairs, in a room that just about fits a bed, a fridge and a microwave. Ale is so resourceful that he even gets his sister a job at a food stall. They have a shared dream: running a small business out of van; both are saving for this automobile that has become the crux of their redemption. But then Isamar begins to come home late. One night Ale discovers his sister in a truck, with a john who paid for her time. Ale does not confront his sister; instead he takes up stealing to improve his earnings, perhaps in the hope that his sister will no longer need to “keep working.” To say money is a recurring motif would be stating the obvious: there is a scene in the film involving Ale throwing a shopping cart over a bridge and another where he feeds grain to pigeons, that beautifully brings home the film’s secret undertone of the American culture of consumerism and self-imposed narcissistic imprisonment. (How relevant given the current economic depression in the US!)

Shot in the cinema verite style, Ramin Bahrani is also smart to eschew the shaky-cam syndrome that plagues pretentious Hollywood mainstream films: visual compositions consist of intimate medium and close-up shots, and the camera is always handheld. The production design, diegetic music and naturalistic lighting lend themselves to the meticulously planned realism. Chop Shop is a confident sophomore film from a young, perceptive director.

* Note: Chop Shop was included at #7 in WearetheMovies.com’s Best Films of 2008

My Winnipeg

In Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg, the director films his autobiography into a docudrama. None of the secrets of the city or his family are spared his intense scrutiny and he lays his life bare, almost naked, for artistic consumption. It’s the best and only form of self psychoanalysis by way of filmic recreations that anyone has ever performed or anyone has ever seen, but it asks the question, how obsessed can a man be with his own life and history. For Maddin, the answer to that question is insignificant for he asks “Who gets to vivisect his own childhood?”

The film is a dreamy odyssey into the mind. Its effect is hypnotizing, even if all we see is never completely hypnotic. I’ve always wondered how a film that employed the literary “stream of consciousness” to film would seem like and My Winnipeg is the answer. The effect is at times difficult to follow — thoughts, internal monologues, history and subjective opinions all overflow in fragmented layers that need to be discerned as we watched. For me, the effect was like reading James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces -– interesting at first, but tiring and sometimes repetitious. The narration is also verbose and punctuated by words never found in common conversations: gynocracy, opiating, confabulations.

The film has numerous charms though. Many memories seem borne out of repression, mostly sexual. Maddin’s quest is understandable. Who hasn’t lived in a city and found himself in a love/hate relationship with it. If familiarity breeds contempt, Maddin is most familiar with his town and its rich, dark, strange history of sleepwalkers and secret séances, leading to his contempt of it as well. Historically significant moments in Winnipeg that occurred during the last century are recreated, none more memorable than an accident where horses feel into a river during winter and froze to death, their heads forming a macabre bust on the snowy surface. Even significant family memories of the director are recreated by hiring lookalike actors in the role of his siblings, as they were in his childhood, filmed at Maddin’s childhood home, rented from its present owner. A strange film of many, many moods, if ever Charlie Kauffman or Michael Gondry were to make a documentary, perhaps this is how it would turn out and even if My Winnipeg is inconsequential to anyone but the director, he makes it universal enough for anyone.

Wendy and Lucy

Wendy and Lucy is a disparaging film about the continuous misfortunes that befall its main character Wendy. Lucy is of course her dog, who gets lost and must be found. Director Kelly Reichardt’s film is about the effect of poverty and the search for that great moment in a person’s life when things will change for the better. In her film, loss and regret are key traits, just like they were in her earlier film, the sleepy, artsy Old Joy, and both films share the same shortcomings — a good idea stretched to feature film length in a film that can’t sustain our interest for too long.

As Wendy, Michelle Williams is androgynous and lost, though there’s no denying the immense power of her performance. She wanders through Oregon, telling everyone during her mumbled conversations that she’s just “passing through” on her way to Alaska to find a better life. This is a poor man’s Into the Wild, stripped of that very basic of film purposes, telling a meaningful story. Not that there isn’t one to tell here — compared to her previous effort, Wendy and Lucy is almost adrenalized, but it still lacks motion. Put in prison briefly for stealing dog food at a supermarket, we spend many quite moments with Wendy in her cell, watch her search for her dog, wash herself in public restrooms, call up the local dog pound, put up ‘lost dog’ posters around the city, all while her broken down car is repaired. Essentially this is the film, but it is stripped of interesting predicaments or narrative momentum. Like last year’s Ballast, it functions as a snapshot of a time and place meant to reflect realism, but alienates with its detachment and unpretentiousness.

The fascination with dogs or animals as surrogate children might make the films sense of loss all the more resonant for some, but for me it has little or no effect and this might just be cultural apathy. Overall, the film is laconic and dull. It has neither the sensible storytelling technique of Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop or that other fabulous American independent film from last year, Momma’s Man. All three films share certain realism on display, but Wendy and Lucy has nothing to offer beyond its dried observation. It is a critic’s film — to some this will be part of the charm, and while there is no denying the tenderness of its end, it is also sedative.

Frozen River

Crime is always about money, but it becomes far more interesting when it turns into greed. Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River, her remarkable debut film, quickly and very succinctly establishes the main characters need for money early on and everything thereafter simply falls into place. Melissa Leo’s Ray is a mother with two kids living just above the poverty line after her Mohawk husband abandons her one morning. With Christmas around the corner, she needs to come up with a way to pay for her new house and the gifts she plans on putting underneath the tree at home. Fate deals a strange hand and she finds herself bumping into a Mohawk woman who suggests a good and uncommon use for her car with “button release trunks”. It’s not immediately obvious what this usage might be, and discovering this and where it leads becomes one of the films many fascinating joys.

Soon Ray and her Mohawk partner-in-crime Lila, start border crossing between New York and Canada smuggling people. The easy money is a lure but there is danger that lurks underneath and it rears its head soon enough, most astonishingly, and in the film’s best segment, when the two meet a Pakistani couple during a late night chilly escapade. The film deals with many issues – racism, destitution, America’s consumerist culture and national security, but in very subtle ways. Its low budget, DV camera actually accentuates the lack of glamour and gives it the feel of an early Coen’s film without the stark irony of the bloody twists. Melissa Leo has the thankless task of being a mother, a criminal and a person we can care about in great deal and her mesmerizing, moody performance deserves all the accolades it has received because she pulls it off in great manner. The film’s script applies Murphy’s Law in ways we both expect and dread, for when a situation has the potential to go wrong, it most certainly will and here it does so in brilliant, simplistic yet effective ways. One of the year’s best and most humane thrillers.

I am a big fan of The Kinks song, Do You Remember Walter?. I have always found the song lyrics somehow moving and troubling. The movie might as well be an adaptation of that song, except it is told from Walter’s perspective:

“Walter, remember when the world was young
And all the girls knew Walter’s name?
Walter, isn’t it a shame the way our little world has changed?
Do you remember, Walter, playing cricket in the thunder and the rain?
Do you remember, Walter, smoking cigarettes behind your garden gate?
Yes, Walter was my mate,
But Walter, my old friend, where are you now?

Walter’s name.
Walter, isn’t it a shame the way our little world has changed?
Do you remember, Walter, how we said we’d fight the world so we’d be free.
We’d save up all our money and we’d buy a boat and sail away to sea.
But it was not to be.
I knew you then but do I know you now?

Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago
If you saw me now you wouldn’t even know my name.
I bet you’re fat and married and you’re always home in bed by half-past eight.
And if I talked about the old times you’d get bored and you’ll have nothing more to say.
Yes people often change, but memories of people can remain.”

The Walter from the song is Chris (Christian Bale), a middle-aged man with a steady job, a wife, a baby, and a mortgage. His childhood and best friend Toni (Lee Ross) shows up after five years and stirs something in him. Toni wanders the globe, fucks around and parties, and has not changed since the days when both of them were young and wanted to set the world on fire. Back on those days (the 60s), they mocked the bourgeois and wanted to be free forever. Toni was an aspiring writer and Chris was an aspiring photographer, but while Toni continues to be one, Chris has moved towards a conformist life:

“Uh… I make lists. Chris Lloyd…the story so far
Healthy, not poor.
Not… deformed.
Not… starving.
Married: Yes.
Children: One.
Job: One.
House: Yes.
Mortgage: Yes.
Car…Arguably.
So on, so on. Till the panic subsides.”

“What have you got to panic about?”

“Nothing. That’s what worries me.”

It is easy to sympathize with Chris and even easier to want to live Toni’s life, but the movie is brilliantly able to show us the difficult decisions that people like Chris face. It would easy to show it by amplifying certain events to show which life is better or worse to make a case for the movie’s intentions, but the movie does not do that. Chris faces the same issues a lot of us do. Why do a lot of us let go of our dreams? In one scene, Chris is tempted to cheat on his wife but pulls back. The woman says that he didn’t do it because he was scared. He retorts angrily, “Possibly, yes! Isn’t that as good a reason as any?” And isn’t it? The conformist, stable life is easy and comforting, and it is scary to change it, but so what? Isn’t that a good enough reason not to change your life? If that sort of life didn’t work, it wouldn’t be so prevalent across generations through all these centuries.

“I’ll never get married.”

“Oh, I think you will.”

“Why?”

“You’re not original enough not to.”

Hunger is about a man that starved himself to death for his principles. His name was Bobby Sands, and he was an IRA member whom the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher eulogized as ‘…a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life.’ In this meticulously crafted film, images play a crucial role and expository dialog is at the mercy of economy — yet there is a 17-minute conversation about morality, religion and politics between Bobby Sands and a visiting priest, all shot in one long take from a static camera, that is a touchstone of writing, acting and cinematography. Sound is also important to director Steve McQueen, who uses it most effectively in the wordless third act, as we watch actor Michael Fassender, playing Sands, gradually reduce to skeletal bones before our very eyes.

The British Government is depicted unsentimentally in Hunger, that while does not explicitly takes sides, uses the documented torture of the IRA prisoners by British jailers and the resolute conviction of Sands to elicit strong reactions from the viewer. The closing title card informs us that Bobby Sands, aged 27, died 66 days after he went on hunger strike, and 9 other IRA prisoners followed him to death.

Listed are the 5 of the very best movies we saw at the Dubai Film Festival 2008, which may have come to a rousing conclusion, but that only means the countdown to next year’s event has already begun.

#1
The Wrestler
Darren Aronofsky | USA | 2008
109 min

This devastating film — the best at the Dubai film festival — about washed-up wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson, features a central performance of astonishing sincerity and charisma by Mickey Rourke, whose own real life mirrors that of his tragic onscreen character. Director Darren Aronofsky exercises uncharacteristic visual restraint and draws out powerful performances that may move you to tears.

#2
Che
Steven Soderberg | USA | 2008
262 min

Che is a tour-de-force of storytelling and filmmaking. The movie, which will be distributed in two parts — Argentine and Guerrilla — was shown as one film at DIFF, separated only by a fifteen-minute break. Both films work perfectly as halves, complementing each other; the first is focused on Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s electrifying campaign to seize Cuba for Fidel Castro while the second documents his unsuccessful Bolivia campaign that ended with his execution. Benicio Del Toro gives one of the year’s most memorable performances in a film that is an anti-biopic, a war movie and a compelling docudrama all rolled into one.

#3
Hunger
Steve McQueen | UK/Ireland | 2008
96 min

This remarkable debut film from director Steve McQueen is both visually arresting and thematically engrossing. About the hunger strike of IRA republican Bobby Sands that ended in his death, it is an unflinching recreation of Sands’ political and personal ideology which you may or may not agree with, but it is hard to deny this man’s steely dedication to his principles. In a film of raw, silent power (there is very little dialogue) the most memorable segment is a 17-minute long conversation between Sands and a priest, filmed from an unmoving camera, placed at vantage point, that makes you want to stand up and applaud. Hunger is an exquisitely crafted film containing a clever, multilayered script, and a compelling lead performance by Michael Fassbender who starved himself for his role.

#4
Song of Sparrows (Avaze Gonjeshk-ha)
Majid Majidi | Iran | 2008
96 min

Is it any surprise that one of the best films of the fest was from Iranian auteur Majid Majidi? Dreary film themes are the hallmark of any film festival, so how refreshing to have Song for Sparrows, a film with so much love for life. Combining good old fashioned storytelling and beautiful imagery, it made us smile, and broke through our fortified wall of cynicism. Full of spirituality, Song for Sparrows is also a study on capitalism and the effect of selfishly accumulating material wealth.

#5
Vacation (Kyûka)
Hajime Kadoi | Japan | 2008
112 min

The biggest surprise at DIFF, Vacation studies, in excruciating detail, the last days of a prisoner on death row in Japan, and how this affects both the condemned and his executioners. It is a meticulously crafted chamber drama with unexpected deadpan humor that provides a counterbalance to the dour subject matter. The performances are uniformly excellent, but it is the depth of the director’s convictions and the precision of skill that makes Vacation absolutely riveting.

Because WearetheMovies.com loves lists (and admit it, so do you) it would have been unfair to highlight only 5 films, especially when we’ve seen so many — so, if nothing else, for that reason alone, we’ve added a sort of an encore to our first five selections. Here are other notable films that just missed our Top 5 list:

Biggest Crowd Pleaser

Slumdog Millionaire
Danny Boyle | UK | 2008
120 min

Made with electrifying energy and effortless in its navigation of deep pits of despair, one could say Slumdog Millionaire almost earns its happy ending. A must-see for fans of the versatile director Danny Boyle.

Most Polarizing Films

Blindness
Fernando Meirelles | Canada/Brazil | 2008
120 min

A grim look at human nature during a blindness epidemic. Based on a novel by Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago, Blindness will provoke you as it uses literal blindness to depict humans’ moral blindness. Memorable for the debates that will follow; some of you will call it cruel, others clever.

Ballast
Lance Hammer | USA | 2008
96 min

An intense and emotional drama from first-time director Lance Hammer, Ballast keeps its secrets close to the chest, revealing them in small bursts that only later form a complete picture. Moody and contemplative, a film that will reward only the very patient viewer.

Best Films Even We Had Never Heard About

Adhen – Dernier Maquis
Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche | France | 2008
93 min

Algerian-French filmmaker Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche creates a sophisticated visual and aural experience in a film that presents the absurdities of religion, capitalism and human nature. The most intellectually stimulating film of the 2008 Dubai film festival.

3 Monkeys (Uc Maymun)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan | Turkey | 2008
109 min

Another visually arresting film from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan (who makes full use of the digital cinematography), that may also be described as Crime and Punishment- lite.

The results were polled by Faizan Rashid, John Murdoch, Kamal Tolani, Shariq Madani and MADali.